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■ ■ I 

... I 







































■■ 







CHRISTIANITY IN THE 
EASTERN CONFLICTS 


Other Books by the Author 

Jesus Christ and the World’s Religions 
A Faith for the World 
The Faiths of Mankind 


CHRISTIANITY IN THE 
EASTERN CONFLICTS 


A Study of Christianity, ‘Nationalism 
and Communism in Asia 


BY 

WILLIAM PATON 

* * 

Secretary of the International Missionary Council 
Editor of the International Review of Missions 
Formerly Missionary Secretary of the Student Christian Movement 
and Secretary of the National Christian Council of India 



Willett, Clark & Company 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 

1937 


Copyright 1937 by 
WILLETT, CLARK ©» COMPANY 


Printed and Bound in the U. S. A. by 
KINGSPORT PRESS, Inc., Kingsport, Tennessee 


Published in Great Britain by the 
Edinburgh House Press 



AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


I HAVE explained in the introductory chapter 
how this book came to be written. Things 
change so rapidly nowadays in the “ unchanging 
East ” that some part of what I have said about cur¬ 
rent events may well be out of date by the time the 
book is published. Even so, I hope that the diag¬ 
nosis of underlying forces may stand a longer 
scrutiny. 

If I could enumerate them, I should wish to thank 
the men and women of many nations with whom, 
during the crowded months of the journey out of 
which this book arises, I had conversation about 
their work and the conditions under which it was 
carried on. Any freshness of treatment and reality 
of insight is due to these priceless contacts with 
people in the forefront of the battle. 

I have to thank my colleagues, Miss Underhill 
and Miss Standley, for help in the revision of the 
manuscript and in the collection of material. To 
Miss Wilson of the United Council for Missionary 
Education, and to certain members of the council, 
I am indebted for much advice and for invaluable 
help in seeing the book through the press. My prin¬ 
cipal indebtedness I have acknowledged elsewhere. 

W. P. 

St. Albans, October , 1936. 


5 



Copyright 1937 by 
WILLETT, CLARK o> COMPANY 


Printed and Bound in the U. S. A. by 
KINGSPORT PRESS, Inc., ” Kingsport, Tennessee 


Published in Great Britain by the 
Edinburgh House Press 



CONTENTS 


Author’s Preface ..... 5 

Introduction ...... 9 

PART I 

THE EAST TODAY 

I. Japan ...... 17 

II. China ...... 41 

III. India ...... 64 

IV. The Near East .... 97 

PART II 

REFLECTIONS 

V. The Gospel and the New Age . 127 

VI. Church, Community and State . 144 

VII. The Life and Witness of the Church 163 

VIII. The Church and the Social Order . 184 

IX. Conclusion ..... 207 

Book List ..... 220 

Index ...... 222 

7 







INTRODUCTION 

T HIS book is based chiefly upon the experi¬ 
ences of a journey which it was my good for¬ 
tune and privilege to undertake during the autumn, 
winter and spring of 1935—6. Traveling from 
England through America and Canada, during 
seven months I visited Japan, Korea, Manchuria, 
China, the Straits Settlements, Java, India, Egypt 
and Palestine. The principal object with which 
this journey was undertaken was to discuss with rep¬ 
resentative Christians of the indigenous churches 
and with missionaries in the different countries the 
plans that had been outlined for holding in the 
Far East, in the autumn of 1938, a world meeting 
of the International Missionary Council, in succes¬ 
sion to those held in 1910 at Edinburgh and in 1928 
at Jerusalem. These plans were made in outline at 
the meeting of the committee of the council in 
Northfield, Massachusetts, and I left the meeting to 
go directly to Japan, there to begin an intensely in¬ 
teresting process of testing, in innumerable discus¬ 
sions, whether the themes which the council had 
chosen as the subject matter of its proposed world 
meeting were in fact the most important. 

9 


10 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

It was suggested to me that out of the journals 
which I wrote on the journey and sent to a number 
of friends I should try to make a book. But books, 
if they ever come alive at all, insist on shaping their 
own life, and what I have finally put together is 
more than a record of impressions. I have divided 
it into two parts. The first part is an attempt to 
state what seemed to me to be, in the light of the 
study possible in the course of my journey joined 
to such previous knowledge as I had, the most im¬ 
portant facts in the life of the four great regions of 
Japan, China, India and the Near East, looked at 
from the point of view of the growing Christian 
church. I am very well aware that in trying to cover 
so much ground I have laid myself open to the 
charge of being dogmatic and superficial. I can 
only say that I had the opportunity of meeting and 
talking with an extraordinarily wide variety of 
people, and that I have tried to be objective and 
not to fit the facts to the theories which come so 
readily to the mind in such a world of change as this. 

The second part of the book is an attempt to dis¬ 
cuss, a little more thoroughly than can be done in 
the course of a factual description, certain of the 
outstanding questions by which the Christian church 
is faced as it addresses itself to the task of witnessing 
in these lands to the Christian gospel. The first 
question that rises in the mind, filled with the great 
events and movements that are transforming the 
peoples before our eyes, is of the gospel itself. Is 
the missionary enterprise, as it has been suggested, 
the spiritual efflorescence of Victorian bourgeois 
prosperity, doomed to pass away as that prosperity 


INTRODUCTION 


11 


has passed away, a notable intercourse of peoples 
and races but not more, at bottom, than the fruit of 
a social movement ? Is it rooted in the eternal ? Is 
there a word of God that speaks to men of our age 
as to those of other ages, and that is supremely rele¬ 
vant in the great conflict of loyalties that is going 
on around us ? 

Next, I believe, comes the characteristic question 
of our time, namely, the relation of the Christian 
church, in which the word is preached and believed 
and lived, to the community and to the state. The 
work that is being done in preparation for the world 
conference on church, community and state at 
Oxford this year is most relevant to the missionary 
enterprise. My earlier chapters show, I trust, that 
this is a problem of supreme practical importance 
and of great urgency. It is one which is now occu¬ 
pying many of the best minds of Christendom, but 
I do not think that its importance for the rising 
churches of the East has been sufficiently noticed. 

I have commented upon two other main issues, 
the life and witness of the church, and the relation 
of the church to the changing social and economic 
order. A living church will manifest its life princi¬ 
pally in the two activities of worship and witness ; 
witness, if it is truly Christian, will not be only in 
word but in deed, and the environment within 
which the church’s life is lived not only changes so 
that new methods of witness are needed, but chal¬ 
lenges the word and the life that are the heart of 
the church by flat denial. Here are many and diffi¬ 
cult questions—I can only hope to have stated them 
and shown their gravity. 


12 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

The central thought which recurs always to my 
mind as I think over all that I saw, and over much 
that has happened since, is of the living church in a 
world of incalculable change. It is terribly easy to 
simplify things (especially for the purpose of public 
speech) so that all reality escapes, and so vast a can¬ 
vas cannot be covered by a few lines. Yet I think 
that it is true to say that the church is faced today 
with both menace and hope. On one side we can 
see the gathering of forces which are likely to set 
greater and greater difficulties in the path of the 
church, and may even threaten its very life. On the 
other there is the great uprising of the spirit of 
evangelism and the turning of minds and hearts to 
the Christian message, if not yet with belief, at least 
with arrested attention. Both things are true ; per¬ 
haps they are parts of the same fact. 

In such a world the Christian church is to find and 
do, as God gives it the power, the will of God. I 
hope that it does not sound arrogant in spirit if I 
say that the meeting of the International Missionary 
Council in Hangchow in 1938, the preparations 
which will precede it and the labor that will follow 
it, are planned in the hope and prayer that they may 
be used by the church in this task of finding, of hear¬ 
ing, the word that God is speaking in the concrete 
situations of our time. The meeting is to comprise 
about four hundred delegates from all parts of the 
world, and it is intended that more than half shall 
themselves be indigenous members of the churches of 
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The decision so 
to compose the membership represents another step 
in a process that goes back through the meetings 


INTRODUCTION 


*3 


held at Edinburgh and at Jerusalem. At the Edin¬ 
burgh meeting in 1910 (the effects of which upon 
the whole ecumenical Christian movement were so 
great) only a handful out of a total of some twelve 
hundred delegates were not of American or Euro¬ 
pean race. At Jerusalem in 1928, out of about two 
hundred and fifty delegates over fifty were members 
of the “ younger ” churches (the phrase was coined 
in the meeting, and, although not satisfactory, it at 
least avoids describing some churches as “ native ” 
when all are native, or describing the larger part of 
the earth as the “ mission field ”). 

At Hangchow the meeting will be essentially a 
meeting of the “ younger ” churches, joined by rep¬ 
resentatives of the church life and missionary ad¬ 
ministration of the West. The central theme is to 
be the church, the universal historic Christian fel¬ 
lowship, especially as it is found and is being built 
up among the Eastern and African peoples. Within 
this central theme there will be further studied the 
faith by which the church lives, the witness of the 
church in evangelism, the life and worship of the 
church, the relation of the church to its environment 
in the social, economic and political order, and the 
need for a greater coherence and unity of action on 
the part of the Christian forces. The meeting will 
be merely the focus of a period of combined prayer, 
work and thought extending over some years. The 
object of the whole endeavor is that the church, 1 or 

1 The word “ church ” is used, unashamedly and of intent, in dif¬ 
ferent senses. Sometimes it means a local congregation or community, 
sometimes what we call a “ denomination,” but chiefly it is used to 
indicate that wide and somewhat vague and yet intensely real fact, 


14 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

such part of it as is willing to work in unison in 
spite of diversity of life and order, shall be aided by 
thorough study and by common consultation in the 
supreme task of learning the will of God for our 
time. 

I do not think that we should be afraid to say even 
so bold a thing as this, if we say it with full recogni¬ 
tion of the fact that it is not in our own effort or 
ability to command success, and that it is God who 
speaks and we who listen. 

The present book has come to be for me an at¬ 
tempt to state some of the matters which the meet¬ 
ing in the Far East will have to face. But I hope 
that any who read this statement will not be deterred 
by it, for the book is not about meetings and confer¬ 
ences but about the world and God. 

the company of Christian people in the unity which they possess 
in spite of their division. In the main I have had to omit the Roman 
Catholic Church from consideration because the hope of common 
consultation and action is still debarred by the policy of that body. 
I have never used the word “ church ” to denote the clergy or min¬ 
istry—a deplorable though all too common habit. 


PART I 


THE EAST TODAY 




I 


JAPAN 

tc TAPAN is the most important single fact in the 
d modern world.” The man who said this to me 
over a dinner table in Calcutta, two or three months 
after I had left Japan, was scarcely exaggerating. 
Japan is, at the very least, as important in her inher¬ 
ent power, in her inevitable relation to other na¬ 
tions, and in the underlying spirit and doctrine of 
her national life, as any other people today. 

I shall always be glad that my first visit to Japan 
was made across the Pacific from Canada and not by 
way of China and Korea ; for I do not think that 
anyone whose first acquaintance with Japan was 
through her imperial expansion could fail to be in 
some degree turned against her, and to that extent 
rendered unable to appreciate her native spirit. 1 
Here is one of the most remarkable peoples in the 
world. They believe that they are uniquely quali¬ 
fied to provide the meeting place of the cultures of 
East and West. They look back to an ancient and 
continuous national history, whose origins are 
wrapped in mists. They rejoice in institutions, the 
imperial house above all, as venerable as the coun¬ 
try’s own history. They know themselves to be filled 
with a restless energy and resource. They look at 
what other nations have done in the world when the 

1 Probably the same is true of us British—I do not know. 

17 


l8 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

chance came to them, and they believe, with com¬ 
plete national unanimity, that this day is their day 
and that they have a work to do. 

Just because there must be in what follows much 
that is radically critical of the Japanese national 
spirit in its relation to other nations I am anxious to 
put first this impression which Japan so powerfully 
forces upon the mind. Take the union of cultures. 
There can be no such thing except on a basis of 
equality, from which every trace of uneasy patronage 
or subservience has been removed. You have that in 
Japan. The externals of city life are of the West; 
indeed the trains, the restaurants, the great depart¬ 
ment stores speak of America rather than of Europe. 
The universities are based upon a virtually universal 
literacy, and they breathe freely in the atmosphere 
of all the world’s scholarship. While the Christian 
colleges look mainly to America, the government 
universities look rather to Germany. 

In economic organization the Japanese have learnt 
all that the West has to teach. I do not know 
whether there was a time in Japan when Japanese 
culture was looked down upon by those who were 
learning the new, but if ever there was it has passed. 
Along with the eager acceptance of what it believes 
the West has to give there is a proud insistence upon 
the Japanese spirit. Buddhism is alive and advanc¬ 
ing, and Shinto—much more typical of Japan than 
Buddhism—by its national cultus molds the very 
life of the people and the policy of its rulers. Even 
if it is held that the culture of Japan is less profound 
and less original than that of China, the conditions 
for an equal meeting of East and West are present. 
No European would be tempted to patronize a 


JAPAN 


*9 


Japanese in Japan ; and equally no Japanese feels 
himself bound either to slavish admiration of the 
West or to the petulant overcriticism of it which is 
the mark of the inferior. 

It is rash for a stranger to speak about the culture 
of another nation, especially upon the basis of a short 
visit. But there are things in the private life of the 
people that speak eloquently of a delicate and beau¬ 
tiful understanding of the art of living, a love of old 
ways that is not the result of sloth but of a strong 
sense of continuity. I felt this deeply when I was 
admitted to the ceremonial tea-drinking in a Chris¬ 
tian Japanese home. It is a beautiful ceremony. 
The tea is prepared and served by the wife or daugh¬ 
ter, with a slow, deliberate, restful ceremoniousness 
which I found wholly delightful. Or again, the old 
castles and the lovely old paintings speak of an an¬ 
cient and delicate culture which is not forgotten in 
the modern Japan of the skyscraper and department 
store but lies deep down in the national conscious¬ 
ness. 

The bookshops give a glimpse of one side of the 
Japanese determination to master the secrets of the 
modern world. In Tokyo are some of the finest 
bookshops in the world. Even in Osaka—a great 
cotton city rather like Manchester with but few for¬ 
eigners living in it—I found bookshops offering 
well known books in several European languages for 
both first and secondhand sale. I had not expected 
to find that Hebrew grammars command a sale in 
Tokyo, but I was seriously assured that professors in 
the imperial university were learning both Greek 
and Hebrew in order to be able to get at the Bible 
for themselves. 


20 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

In the industrial field the same sense of unity and 
power is conveyed. I need not exhume figures about 
Japanese exports from blue books to illustrate what 
everybody knows, namely, the extraordinary rise in 
Japanese exports. Undeniably the wave of Japanese 
goods that has flooded every market in the East and 
far beyond it has presented very great difficulties to 
the other industrial nations. But it should be real¬ 
ized that this export trade is essential if Japan is to 
feed her people. Extensive emigration is prohibited 
to her, and in any case it does not appear that the 
Japanese are, like the Chinese, a people that can 
“ swarm,” going in masses to other lands, there to 
bring up their children. 2 The Japanese seem to have 
set their faces in another direction : they will feed 
their people by exchanging manufactured goods for 
food and raw materials. They must succeed in this 
or perish, and the working classes work with some¬ 
thing of the patriotic elan which all Japan puts into 
the national task. When I read something like this 
in a report of the International Labor Office I feared 
that Geneva had waxed sentimental—but it is true. 

Behind this unity and this impressive demonstra¬ 
tion of national purpose, however, lurk other factors 
that are ominous. There are elements of grave di¬ 
vision among the people. Economically the condi¬ 
tion of the villages is different from that of the towns. 
The primary producer all over the world has been 
getting very little for his crops since the great depres¬ 
sion began, and Japan is no exception. Taxation in 
Japan is high, as it must be when we remember not 
only the colossal expenditure, largely met by loans, 

2 The colonies of Japanese in Brazil and the Philippines hardly 
disprove this observation. 


JAPAN 


21 


on armaments and military expeditions, but what 
must have been demanded by the rebuilding after 
the earthquake of 1923. The villages look to the 
army, which is essentially of the countryside in both 
officers and men, to bring them the prosperity they 
lack, though it is hard to see how, for instance, 
the Manchurian adventure can do other than in¬ 
crease the competition with which the farmer must 
contend. 

If city and village are in some measure opposed 
economically, within the urban mass populations are 
also the latent forces of division that exist in every 
industrialized society. One reason for the timing of 
the Manchurian invasion may have been the desire 
to distract attention from the growing problem of the 
socially conscious proletariat of the cities, and to 
drown the voices of socialism and communism in a 
flood of patriotic emotion. This at least was the re¬ 
sult ; and it is plain to any observer of the social 
movement in Japan, and even of social service and 
ameliorative agencies, that all effort of that kind is at 
present carried on with much difficulty and under 
constant suspicion. 

The conditions of life of the Japanese industrial 
workers are superior to those of the workers of China 
and India. It was put to me by a foreign worker in 
this field that if one took the figure ten to indicate 
the level of life of the factory operative in one of the 
great Western industrial countries and the figure one 
to indicate the level in India or China, the figure for 
Japan would be somewhere about five. I mention 
this with some diffidence, for I have no claim to speak 
out of personal investigation, but it is perhaps fair to 
state it. A labor leader with whom I had conversa- 


22 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tion in Osaka spoke freely of the discontent among 
the working men, and asserted that the prosperity of 
the country was not reflected among the masses or 
indeed anywhere except among the great capitalists. 
And yet I was conscious during our conversation that 
he was saying much less than I had expected to hear, 
and far less than later on I heard from social work¬ 
ers in Shanghai. 

But whatever be the comparisons that it is fair to 
make between the conditions of factory workers in 
Japan and in other Eastern countries, there can be no 
doubt that the fear of subversive action on the part 
of an organized working class is very much present 
among the rulers of Japan. Communism is both 
ruthlessly suppressed and greatly feared. It has, as 
in other countries, its attractions for the younger 
intelligentsia, and every effort is made to prevent the 
circulation (or, as the customs examination so pro¬ 
fusely shows, the introduction into the country) of 
communist literature or anything that might be held 
to contain “ dangerous thoughts.” Thirty thousand 
people were arrested for complicity in communism 
between 1930 and 1935. It is curious to reflect that 
in every country some people in important positions 
hold that ideas of this kind can be kept out by physi¬ 
cal means. Communism is not an empty theory ; it 
offers an explanation of present facts and a prophecy 
of their alteration. Those who, like the present 
writer, differ totally from the communist view cannot 
deny that the social facts need altering even more 
than they need explaining. Japan is industrial as no 
other nation of the East has ever been. About half 
her people live directly upon machine industry. She 
is also a highly capitalized country, with great con- 


JAPAN 


23 


centration of wealth in a few hands. Japan will 
have to face the same social struggle as all other na¬ 
tions that have embarked upon industrialization. 

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that there 
has arisen, particularly among the younger officers 
of the army, a school of thought very closely re¬ 
sembling fascism. The army, as I have already said, 
is rooted in the rural life of Japan, and there is some 
sincerity in the plea that it stands in the name of 
patriotism against the financiers and capitalists and 
the liberal type of politician, who are supposed to be 
in the pay of big business. This plea has been some¬ 
what harder to sustain since certain leading figures 
in the army and in the navy were involved in finan¬ 
cial scandals ; but it is probably true that the type of 
social order in which the younger army type of mind 
believes is what is called the corporative state. 3 One 
hears rumors of a demand for sequestration of the 
property of one or another immensely wealthy family 
to help to meet army charges. Undoubtedly this 
type of propaganda made it easier for the army to 
carry through the Manchurian invasion and the sub¬ 
sequent advance into China ; for it appears to put 
the country before private gain. 

I turn now to that feature of Japanese life and 
thought which, from the point of view of the Chris¬ 
tian church, seems to be most dangerous, namely, 
the complex of ideas centered in the doctrine of the 
divinity of the emperor. I shall return to the use 
that the army is making of this, for the doctrine itself 
is of far wider range. The emperor has a place in 
the national life probably unique in the world. The 

3 I.e., authoritarian government through functional groups rather 
than by representative democracy. 


24 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

dynasty is held to be descended from Amaterasu, the 
sun-goddess. It is certainly continuous in line since 
before the Christian era. (If the Olympic games go 
to Japan in the year 1940 they will coincide with the 
celebration of the twenty-six hundredth anniversary 
of the foundation of the Japanese imperial house.) 
The emperor is not to be thought of merely as the 
supreme executive, or as the organ of the state. This 
theory, usually referred to as the “ emperor-organ 
theory,” and associated with the name of Dr. Minobe, 
has been officially proscribed. The accepted view is 
that in the emperor, by reason of his divine quality, 
all power inheres, and he can bestow it on whom he 
will. The whole people in a sense shares in this 
divine quality, and the essence of the Japanese spirit 
is the wholehearted acceptance of this special quality 
and worth of the Japanese nation. 

The doctrine is accompanied and supported by the 
rite of emperor worship. About this rite much has 
been written and much controversy has gathered. 
There are certain shrines set apart for the observance 
of “ state Shinto,” a cultus to be distinguished from 
the many and varied sects of denominational Shinto. 
In these state shrines the officiants are frequently re¬ 
tired officials, generals or admirals ; and while the 
government, through its bureau of religions, exer¬ 
cises a general supervision over all Shinto worship, 
as over other worship, state Shinto is directly carried 
on by it. 

There is a steadily increasing pressure, especially 
on the schools, to take part in the rites of state 
Shinto. Sometimes no more is required than a visit 
to the shrine and a bow in the unadorned, austere 
holy place. Sometimes the pupils are compelled to 


JAPAN 


25 


be present at rites in the shrine, where prayers are 
made to the divine ancestors of the nation. The 
army instructor, placed on the staff of every Japanese 
school by the army, is naturally a person of great 
importance, and it is from him that this pressure pro¬ 
ceeds. The official defense is that these ceremonies 
are not religious but patriotic; that the constitution 
of Japan declares the freedom of religion ; that com¬ 
pulsion to follow any one religion is, therefore, un¬ 
thinkable ; and that all must cordially join in those 
ceremonies which are necessary for the unity and 
well-being of the nation. It is important, in this 
connection, to remember that in Japan there are 
practically no primary schools except those con¬ 
ducted by the state, and that in these schools the 
full doctrine of the emperor mythology is taught. 

A word much used in the discussions on these sub¬ 
jects, for which no English translation seems to be 
quite exact, is the word “ kokutai” which means 
something like “ national substance.” “ Commu¬ 
nity ” and “ Gemeinschaft ” are near it, but the phi¬ 
losophy of kokutai has to be understood in its own 
light. I take the following from a newspaper article 
by a Japanese writer : 

Any thought or movement, however strongly it 
is supported by the public . . . will suddenly be 
stamped as being rebellious and lose its support 
when once anything contradicting kokutai is found 
in it. . . . Kokutai is a social idea including such 
meanings as national substance, national prin¬ 
ciples, and national form, and is not a mere politi¬ 
cal idea. . . . Ours is a nation that began with 
the “ transfer of the country ” carried out by the 
sun-goddess and was completed by the “ stating of 


26 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

the country ” accomplished by the Emperor Jimmu 
—a sacred land reigned over by august emperors, 
coeval with heaven and earth, whose imperial 
throne is occupied by a single dynasty. ... Its 
constitution is different from those of other coun¬ 
tries. . . . The empire was founded by making, 
according to divine command, natural laws and 
justice crystallize into state and life. . . . Who 
founded Nippon? It all goes back to the sun- 
goddess and the other gods . . . who created or 
ruled this country. These numberless gods be¬ 
came the standard of the mind of the people, and 
from this was born the idea that Nippon is a sacred 
land. This idea has been inherited from god to 
god, from the ancestral gods to the nation founding 
gods, and then to their successors, the gods in hu¬ 
man form (the emperors), and has led the people 
to “ worship the gods,” “ comprehend the gods' 
will,” “ abide by the gods’ principles,” and 44 arrive 
at the gods’ virtue.” This is how this sacred land 
of ours has grown up, and this way of thinking has 
become the very nature of 44 the people of the sa¬ 
cred land.” 

Why did the gods found the country of Nippon ? 
Because they wanted a place where they could 
realize their will. The place that was chosen first 
is this land of ours, and the people are in duty 
bound to be obedient and to adjust themselves to 
their rule unconditionally, thus making the will of 
the gods the standard of everything. . . . Thus it 
is evident that Nippon was established in a way 
not to be found in any other country : the creator 
gods ; and 44 Michi ” the will of the gods ; and the 
Emperors, the descendants of the gods who inherit 
the “Michi ” and rule ; and the subjects who work 
united with the emperors in one body ; and the 
territory, the material element that fulfills the 


JAPAN 


27 


work of the gods—these five have crystallized into 
one. . . . All of this has led to Nippon’s national 
activity and social progress, its politics, learning, 
military power, industry and all other things, ex¬ 
panding for the purpose of carrying out the gods’ 
will. . . . The study of Nippon kokutai is the 
duty of us Nipponese, and the decree of the em¬ 
perors Jimmu and Meiji is that we shall concen¬ 
trate to set a good example of a righteous country 
before the world. 

Let us assume that the above passage represents a 
fairly extreme form of the doctrine, though I doubt 
whether it does. It will at least indicate the sort of 
national philosophy with which we have to do in 
Japan. It will be expounded differently by people 
of different outlooks. Those who cling to liberal 
ideas will try to interpret it as merely a spirit of 
patriotism, and will accept the official apologia that 
the prescribed rites are not “ religious.” Those who 
look to a military expansion on the basis of a fascist 
type of social organization will find this religious 
philosophy admirably adapted to their need. It ap¬ 
pears that the officer group who were behind the 
murders of February 1936 (in which Takahashi, one 
of the most courageous and far-sighted men in Japan, 
met his death) were exponents of this idea. They 
held a mystical view of the imperial mission of Japan, 
recognized that the money for expansion could not 
be found under a liberal capitalist order without an 
intolerable increase of taxation which would be ruin¬ 
ous to the farmers, and therefore, with a truly revolu¬ 
tionary spirit exactly analogous to the left wing 
movements of other countries, slew the liberal 
finance minister and demanded a radical reorganiza- 


28 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tion of the resources of the state. The London 
Times correspondent remarked of this movement, 
known as the Showa restoration movement: 

It is, fundamentally, the Japanese response to 
the modern revolutionary impulse. The “ divine 
discontent ” which impels it along is aroused, here 
as everywhere else, by the contrast between the 
wealth of society and the poverty of individuals. 
It is not communism, it is not the New Deal, but 
it shares their faith that miracles can be wrought 
if only the state controls the economic machinery. 
In other nations the clamor of the masses for a 
fuller life inspires the demand for a greater diffu¬ 
sion of wealth. In Japan, where conditions and 
background are different, it comes as a need for 
greater government revenues to promote the secur¬ 
ity and welfare of the nation by military means. I * * 4 

I know that the importance which I am here as¬ 
cribing to the emperor-worship issue is not accepted 
by many, perhaps most, of the leading Christians and 
foreign missionaries in Japan. It is pointed out that 
Christians are allowed to make it clear to all con¬ 
cerned that they accept these rites in the sense in 
which government ordains them, namely, as acts of 
patriotic veneration and nothing more. It is also 
urged, and this with much practical wisdom, that the 
constructive policy for Christians to follow is to avoid 
direct collision with the state and to try to put into 
the minds of those whom they may influence a truer 
notion of God and of worship, so that false and crude 

notions may die away. 

Even so, conflict lies ahead ; and it seems to me, 

4 The London Times, July 14, 1936. 


JAPAN 


29 


influenced as one must be (and I think rightly so) by 
some knowledge of tendencies elsewhere in the 
world, that we are beholding in Japan the clearest 
instance in modern times of the regimentation of the 
state, in all its parts, round the idea of its own abso¬ 
lute sacredness. Already there are signs of interfer¬ 
ence with the intellectual liberty and integrity of the 
universities. Just as in Germany the Nordic obses¬ 
sion has produced the most amazing ethnological 
theories from otherwise eminent scholars, so in Japan 
we find arguments solemnly adduced to show that 
Japanese recorded history is twenty thousand years 
old. A committee was established some years ago to 
try to reach an understanding on the question of 
shrine worship, but no agreement could be found, 
and the committee has now abandoned its task. In 
1930 an informal conference 5 took place between a 
leading government official and a group of Chris¬ 
tians in which some searching questions were put in 
the desire to discover whether the government, in 
stating that the rites were non-religious, based its 
statement upon a thorough examination of what took 
place in the shrines. This is the all-important ques¬ 
tion, and the simple truth is that it has been an¬ 
swered evasively in every official statement. None 
of the doubts, clearly and admirably expressed in 
that conference, seem to have been removed. On 
the contrary, there are now examples of the persecu¬ 
tion of Christians as such. Inquirers and converts 
are sometimes exhorted to keep away from this in¬ 
ternationalist and un-Japanese religion. Sometimes 
the influence of the military instructor, even in 
Christian schools, is such that no Christian work is 
5 See Japan Christian Quarterly, July, 1930. 


30 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

possible. I have heard of a teacher’s being arrested 
because, in reply to a child’s question, he stated that 
Jesus was greater than the emperor. A Christian in 
Kobe was imprisoned and severely dealt with because 
he denied that the sun-goddess was divine and re¬ 
fused to worship the emperor. 

The feeling that behind all this is a policy of state 
expansion, based upon the religious absoluteness of 
the state, is confirmed when one finds, as I did in 
Korea, that shrine worship is being pressed there 
with even greater vigor than in Japan proper, and 
that it is enforced also in Formosa and in the man¬ 
dated islands of the Pacific. For Christians in Korea 
a crucial situation immediately arises, for they have 
not the patriotic feeling for the emperor and the 
tutelary heroes that Japanese have, and they regard 
the demand that they should engage in shrine 
worship as tantamount to a demand that they should 
return to idolatry. In Korea earnest efforts have 
been made to reach a form of observance possible to 
Christian consciences and yet acceptable to the state 
—e.g. in which it might be made plain that the 
spirits of the heroes, believed to be present in the 
worship, are not so present—but the use of any such 
form has always been refused. The state demands 
its worship on its own terms. 

I found myself driven to the conclusion that when 
a government, while urging that the required ob¬ 
servances are patriotic and not religious, so steadily 
adheres to its demands, refusing alternative versions 
of its rites that would be free from religious misun¬ 
derstanding, it really means that what it demands is 
more important than religion. Or, to put it another 
way, it uses the word “ religion ” to denote sectarian 


JAPAN 


31 


and private cults ; for its own observance it reserves 
that absoluteness and universality of range which be¬ 
long to true religion. 

While it is necessary to face the logical meaning 
of this movement, I must not write as though there 
were no other tendencies but these in Japan. The 
election held last February resulted in a considerable 
measure of success for the more radical of the two 
great parties, and incidentally brought into the 
House an increased number of Christians. There is 
much concern over the growth of the military budget 
and the expanding plans of the militarists. Though 
little unprejudiced news of China is available to the 
ordinary Japanese reader, and there is a surprising 
amount of conventional talk about the “ chaos ” pre¬ 
vailing in that country, wiser heads can see that in 
the struggle between the two powers, were it carried 
through to the end, the fate not of China alone but 
of Japan also would be involved. Men will say to 
you in private, “ I do not know of a single person 
of education and judgment who really approves of 
what has been done by the army leaders in these re¬ 
cent years.” I have been told that when the extreme 
nationalist party sought to organize the students of 
the Imperial University of Tokyo they could secure 
only some eighty members in a university of about 
five thousand. This has to be put against the un¬ 
questioned fact that the army is popular with the 
mass of the people. 

Nothing in this connection is more important than 
the signs that the educational authorities are now of 
a mind to modify the extremer nationalist tendency 
so far as the life and teaching of the schools is con¬ 
cerned. (It must, of course, always be remembered 


32 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

that the army authorities can act apart from other 
authority, and this, I believe, applies to the army in¬ 
structors whose pressure has been felt in the matter 
of shrine worship.) There is concern even among 
moderate conservatives, as well as among liberals (I 
do not, of course, use these words in a technical party 
sense) about the narrowness of military ideals in edu¬ 
cation, and about the danger of the imposition by 
the military mind of a mechanical type of education 
such as to prevent any development of private judg¬ 
ment in the pupil. During 1935, the minister of 
education sent an instruction to all schools to abstain 
from any restrictions upon, or interference with, au¬ 
thorized religious and moral instruction. The inten¬ 
tion was to encourage anything that would make for 
individual character and independence of judgment. 
The ministry sent to colleges, universities and higher 
schools a deputation consisting of a Shintoist, a Bud¬ 
dhist and a Christian, charged with the duty of en¬ 
couraging religious activity in these institutions. I 
am told that later the ministry ordered all primary 
schools to introduce more teaching based upon the 
lives of heroes of moral and cultural advance, and 
to lessen the tendency to concentrate attention upon 
the lives of military heroes. Mr. Takata, the head 
of the bureau of religions, attended as a visitor the 
all-Japan Christian conference held in November, 
1935, to explain on behalf of the minister of educa¬ 
tion a new religious bill shortly to be introduced 
into the parliament. Among the provisions men¬ 
tioned was one to secure proper educational and 
moral qualifications for religious workers. 

I hope that whether or not this estimate of the 
situation which faces Christianity in Japan is felt to 


JAPAN 


33 


be just, at least it has been made clear how complex 
and difficult that situation is. 

Let us now consider the Christian forces in Japan. 
There are about four hundred thousand Christians 
—Orthodox, Evangelical, Anglican and Roman 
Catholic. Exact numbers are difficult to state, for 
the familiar reason that different bodies employ dif¬ 
ferent statistical bases ; but the number of “ church 
members ” returned by the Anglican and Evangeli¬ 
cal churches in 1934 was almost two hundred 
thousand. The Orthodox metropolitan, Sergius, 
puts his community’s number at forty thousand, 
of whom, he added to me with characteristic candor, 
he would count perhaps twenty-two thousand as the 
effective number. The most striking fact about the 
extension of Christianity in Japan is its slight hold 
upon the villages and its relatively large influence 
among the educated and “ middle class ” people. 
There are relatively few places of worship in the vil¬ 
lage areas, and one of the hoped-for results of the 
visit paid to the United States by Dr. Toyohiko 
Kagawa in 1936 was the creation of a fund for build¬ 
ing a large number of rural churches. On the other 
hand, one is constantly surprised by the position of 
influence that Christians possess in the leadership of 
the country. At the time of the coronation of the 
present emperor, three of the five presidents of the 
imperial universities of Japan were Christians. 

It is especially in the sphere of education that the 
Christians are influential, though they have an honor¬ 
able record also in the different forms of social serv¬ 
ice and not least in the education of the social 
conscience. Both in regard to the narcotic evil and 
in combating the traffic in vice they have been con- 


34 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

spicuous, though the power of commercialized vice 
in Japan has long been great and it takes courage to 
oppose publicly and vigorously a traffic which is not 
afraid to use the violence of hired ruffians to defend 
itself against attack. 

Japanese Christian leaders are well aware of the 
fact that until now there has been little mass evan¬ 
gelistic work done by the church in Japan and that 
a great number of the Christians do not know how 
to approach the villages, with which they have had 
but little contact. There are historical reasons for 
this, of which all that need be said here is that the 
gospel came to Japan as teaching , and that the most 
immediate opening that offered was among the stu¬ 
dents, who had been aroused by their contact with 
Western knowledge and made alert to the challenge 
of new truth. But, as one Japanese friend wistfully 
said to me, “ The people in the villages are satis¬ 
fied ; they have a religion.” 

The “ Kingdom of God ” movement which began 
in 1929 under the leadership of Dr. Kagawa had as 
one of its objectives to double the Christian member¬ 
ship in Japan. But it would be misleading to lay 
much emphasis on this numerical goal, for in the 
movement there were two main elements always pres¬ 
ent : a genuine zeal for conversion, shown not 
merely in an efficient organization but in the great 
volume of prayer stirred up among the Christians of 
Japan ; and an effort, conceived in Kagawa’s own 
spirit, to unite evangelism with social practice in the 
form of the cooperative movement. This is not the 
place to offer any estimate of the kingdom of God 
movement—there is some question both about the 


JAPAN 


35 


firmness with which the double objective was main¬ 
tained and about the degree to which the movement 
was integrated with the life of the churches. In 
November, 1935, at the all-Japan Christian con¬ 
ference, a new united evangelistic movement was 
begun. In this it is hoped that the churches will 
join together more fully and (in the right sense) 
more officially than before, and that a persistent at¬ 
tempt will be made to find a way to the mind and 
heart of the villagers. There are plans for the forma¬ 
tion of a school for training in rural evangelism 
linked with other forms of rural service, a line of 
work which, as we shall see later, other countries are 
beginning to pursue. 

Japanese Christians like others throughout the 
East are impatient of the divisions which have ac¬ 
companied the coming of the gospel, and there is a 
strong movement in which laymen are conspicuous 
for achieving a large measure of unity. One of the 
reasons for this movement is undoubtedly the sense 
that the Christians are all too few and that they must 
act together if their witness is to be effective. An¬ 
other aspect of this consciousness that Christianity in 
Japan needs to be equipped to deal with its task is 
to be found in the considerable interest taken in 
modern theological movements. Professor Karl Barth 
has many followers in Japan, and it is said that cer¬ 
tain Buddhists claim to have discerned his teachings 
in the Buddhist books! There is a steady stream of 
translations of theological works into Japanese—I 
noticed Bultmann’s Jesus, a leading book of the 
“ form criticism ” school, in the list—but as I have 
already said, the touch of Japanese thinkers with 


36 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

the outside world is nowadays more by direct use of 
foreign books than by resort to translation. 

I was greatly impressed by the genuine concern 
felt by representative Japanese Christians for the 
Christian welfare of the outlying parts of the Japa¬ 
nese empire and the countries under Japanese in¬ 
fluence. The Overseas Evangelistic Association is 
not concerned only, though it is in part, with minis¬ 
tering to Japanese abroad ; it is deeply concerned 
also with the evangelization of the peoples of For¬ 
mosa, Manchuria and Jehol, and the mandated terri¬ 
tories of the South Seas. While I was in Mukden, 
during my brief stay in Manchuria, I met a young 
Japanese and his wife who had been sent from Japan 
as the first missionaries of this association to the 
people of Jehol, and there was no mistaking their 
missionary spirit. Here is one of the signs that show 
how the secular ambitions of Japan affect her re¬ 
ligious life. (Incidentally I noticed that a good deal 
was being said in Japan about the extension of Bud¬ 
dhism in other countries and particularly in the 
West.) It is not an exaggeration to say that on a 
small scale the same thing is happening within Japa¬ 
nese Christianity that happened within British Chris¬ 
tianity at the birth of the modern missionary 
movement. It is merely foolish to write this off as 
“ spiritual imperialism.” In each case there has been 
a realization—through colonization or discovery or 
extension of national influence—of the existence of 
other lands. It has borne fruit among Christians in 
a sense of evangelistic responsibility. 

In no way, however, do the Japanese Christians so 
clearly show their sense of being linked with the rest 


JAPAN 


37 


of the world in responsibility for giving and receiv¬ 
ing as in their attitude toward foreign missionary 
activity within Japan. I cannot exaggerate the 
earnestness with which many of the most representa¬ 
tive Christians urged in my hearing their sense of the 
importance of the continuance for many years yet of 
the missionary contribution, not merely in money 
but in men and women. This is the more remark¬ 
able in that Japanese Christians are in unquestioned 
control of the activities of the Japanese churches. 
The missionary has passed almost completely from 
the position of leadership which he still holds to a 
large extent in India, and even to some extent in 
China. Whether the Japanese leaders, absorbed in 
the tasks of the churches, have given sufficient 
thought to the place of the missionary under modern 
conditions in Japan, I am not so sure. But when 
it is suggested that the missionary is no longer needed 
and should be withdrawn, there is genuine consterna¬ 
tion. It was put to me by some of the best men I 
met in some such words as these : “We know that 
our Christianity is weak in numbers, very young— 
practically all of it arisen since i860, and therefore 
lacking in maturity and experience of its own. We 
know also that we have to present the gospel and 
witness to it before our ancient people, with its long 
continuous traditions and its keen sense of national 
continuity. We need to be backed up by the rest of 
world Christianity, and to be helped to feel ourselves 
a part of a world fellowship.” It was for this reason 
that the Japanese National Christian Council so 
strongly urged that the next meeting of the Inter¬ 
national Missionary Council should be held in Japan. 


38 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Here, then, are some powerful arguments for the 
view which forced itself upon me, that the future of 
Christianity in Japan is a matter of great importance 
to the whole Christian world. There is, first, the 
consideration that springs from the strength and im¬ 
portance of Japan herself. Whatever we may think 
of some things that the Japanese government has 
done and is doing, it is not to be denied that a good 
deal of the history of the world during the coming 
generation is being planned in Tokyo. The Japa¬ 
nese are a people of great resource ; the very fact 
that the nation believes itself to be misunderstood 
by other countries, and to be reproved for doing 
only what others have done, makes it more self- 
assertive. Japanese Christians believe that as mem¬ 
bers of the Japanese body they must try to bear a 
Christian witness, and that upon their success in so 
doing much may depend for the world. 

Second, there are the difficulties and dangers which 
beset the Japanese churches as they face their task. 
If what everyone says is true—that there is a na¬ 
tional revival in Japanese religion—it is not a revival 
that helps the Christian faith. It flows easily along 
Shinto channels—that hardly needs saying. It flows 
easily, too, along Buddhist channels ; for Buddhism, 
though alive in Japan and performing a teaching 
office, can easily accept the syncretistic union with 
Shinto which the nationalist revival implicitly sug¬ 
gests. But nothing can ever obscure the fact that 
there is about Christianity something exclusive. 

Moreover, as I have tried to show, there is at issue 
for Christians something more serious than a measure 
of unpopularity in a time of national exhilaration, 


JAPAN 


39 


or an inability to take the same advantage of a vague 
national religiosity that others can. It may be that 
the elements in Japanese life and thought that desire 
to make the state religiously absolute will confirm 
their already formidable hold upon the country. At 
present, though there are exceptions, the general 
view of Japanese Christians is that the “ non¬ 
religious ” explanation of the rites on the part of the 
government may be taken as sincere, and the re¬ 
quired observances accepted in that sense. I think 
that, apart from a genuine affection for the emperor 
and a wish not to weaken the emperor institution, 
they take this attitude in the belief that the groups 
in national leadership who think more or less with 
them will come out victorious and the militarist 
theology fall out of fashion. On any reading, the 
situation is one full of peril ; it might easily become 
one of acute and terrible danger. For there is no 
doubt that the militarist section is definitely anti- 
Christian—and very properly so, for it is utterly im¬ 
possible to accommodate any kind of Christianity to 
the beliefs which I have tried earlier in this chapter 
to sketch. 

Yet even these hopes and dangers do not quite 
reach to the depth of the appeal which I feel that 
Japan makes to our common Christianity. I can best 
convey it by telling the story that was told me at the 
Poole School, conducted by the C.M.S. for girls in 
Osaka. There was a great typhoon in Osaka two 
years ago, followed by a tidal wave, and in the devas¬ 
tation that engulfed the city the building of the 
school partly collapsed. Some seventeen girls were 
killed. They were caught beneath the fallen beams, 


40 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

unable to move and terribly crushed, and while they 
were waiting in the faint hope of rescue one among 
them, herself a non-Christian, asked that prayer be 
made and a hymn sung. A Christian girl prayed and 
all those who were able joined in the words of 
“ Abide with Me ” ; and so singing and praying they 
died before they could be rescued. The newspapers 
of Osaka heard of the story. “ What is this religion/' 
they asked, “ that teaches Japanese girls to die like 
Japanese soldiers ? ” I spoke with the principal of 
the school, a Japanese Christian who had himself 
been rescued when at the point of death. He told 
me, in words which I will try to repeat, of his own 
spiritual experience in that time of agony : “ I saw 
a brightness and wished to advance toward it, but 
when I tried to do so I could not, for I was held 
back by my sins. So I came back to life, and now 
I know that God has spared my life so that I might 
be more fully given to his service." 

The nearness of the Japanese to great physical 
disaster, their tradition of the chivalry of the samurai, 
their own spirit of utter surrender to the emperor— 
these facts all make them a people to whom religion 
appeals most of all in the heroic. Here is the secret 
of the success of that great Japanese Christian, Ka- 
gawa. He is consumed with the desire to be identi¬ 
fied with the sufferings of Jesus Christ upon the cross. 

The supreme service that the church as a whole 
can render to Japan and to Japanese Christians is 
to help them into the deepest understanding of 
Christianity, in thought, action and worship, for only 
a discipleship both passionate and profound will 
move this people. 


II 


CHINA 

I SAID that I was glad to have entered Japan for 
the first time from the Pacific and not through 
her dominions on the mainland. I came to China, 
however, through Manchuria, and I do not think 
that the terrible picture there unfolded gives one a 
wrong introduction to the China of today. The 
shadow of Japanese advance lies dark over the future 
as Chinese who love their country look into it. Per¬ 
haps what has happened in Manchuria may be re¬ 
peated even more widely in China. In any case it 
would be utterly unrealistic to write of modern 
China without recognizing the master fact of Japa¬ 
nese policy and all that flows from it. 

For Japan, the issue of Manchuria, or Manchukuo, 
is settled. Even those Japanese who opposed or 
doubted seem now to be of one mind with the rest. 
I need not elaborate their case—Japan fought Rus¬ 
sia for Manchuria and was kept out by Europe ; she 
has not only given her blood for the land but has 
great material interests there ; the Manchus wanted 
autonomy, and though force was used it was only 
used in the same way that the Allies used force to 
establish the Czecho-Slovak state ; China is in a state 
of chaos ; Manchuria is Japan’s “life line ” ; and in 
any case, what superior righteousness have the West- 
41 


42 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

ern states shown that they may take a high line over 
Japan’s necessary action in Manchukuo ? 

On the essential point of fact, namely, whether the 
people really wanted a government of their own, 
separate from China, neutral opinion appears to be 
emphatic that they did not. It is a fruitless plea, 
anyway, for what they have got is not in any sense a 
Manchurian or local government but the military 
government of a Japanese dominion. It is more use¬ 
ful to ask what Japan means to do with it. There 
is much talk about a Japan-Korea-Manchuria eco¬ 
nomic bloc. I am afraid that I must anticipate my 
narrative and add that usually a fourth member is 
joined to those three—North China. It would be 
quite impossible in this little book to deal at all fully 
with the highly complicated problem of Japan’s eco¬ 
nomic position in relation to her oversea adventures, 
for it is a tangled web into which come considera¬ 
tions of Japan’s food supply, her possession or lack 
of raw materials, her dread of communism, her need 
at all costs to sell her manufactured goods, her rela¬ 
tions with Russia, and of the place of Russia in the 
European balance. But it is reasonably certain that 
no one in Japan really thinks that great masses of 
Japanese are going to live in Manchuria. They have 
sent only half a million Japanese to Korea where the 
climate is kindlier. It was remarked to me, “ There 
are three things Japanese want and cannot get in 
Manchuria—baths, schools and newspapers.” 

Let us say, then, that for a combination of strategic 
and economic reasons Japan (and this must be taken 
to mean not merely a military party but practically 
everybody who is vocal) is convinced that it is neces- 


CHINA 


43 


sary for Manchuria to be integrated with Japan. The 
tragedy of the situation is, in part at least, that so 
little of the beneficence which civilian Japanese 
honestly believe must follow in the train of the 
“ emperor way ” is to be found in Manchukuo. It 
is a purely military regime ; the so-called Kwantung 
army of Japan is all-powerful, and Manchukuo is 
not the first state in which the establishment of a 
military authority over a sullenly resentful people 
has attracted a low type of man to the posts of 
power. 

Not long before I reached Mukden there had been 
a considerable number of arrests, mainly of leading 
Christians, pastors and doctors, the effect of which 
had been virtually to immobilize the Manchurian 
church. The facts of this matter were withheld from 
public comment by the missions, out of the well 
grounded fear that publicity would rebound upon 
the heads of the unfortunate Manchurian Christians. 
The main outline of the story has, however, ap¬ 
peared in the London Times and elsewhere, and it 
can do no harm here to say that some sixty persons 
were arrested without charge made in any court, held 
for questioning, in some cases tortured in extremely 
modern ways, and only released (in most cases) after 
weeks spent in jail under the severest conditions. I 
do not think it necessary to hold that this action was 
actuated by specifically anti-Christian motives. The 
type of person who rules Manchukuo is, all over the 
world, highly credulous ; there had been an acknowl¬ 
edged failure to suppress banditry and anti-Japanese 
guerrilla warfare ; there must, it seemed, be some 
center where educated people, in touch with the 


44 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

outer world and especially with China, were inspir¬ 
ing these movements; what more likely than that 
the Christians, who possessed almost the only edu¬ 
cated leadership among Manchurian Chinese, were 
at the bottom of it ? A society—most innocent in 
its simple philanthropy—was discovered, possessing 
a name reminiscent of certain communist organiza¬ 
tions, and it was obvious to the governing mind that 
here was communist anti-Japanese agitation. 

Even were this all, it would bode ill for the future 
of Christianity in Manchuria. Those who are be¬ 
hind the Manchurian policy are not the liberal 
civilians of Tokyo, but the fanatical exponents of a 
military mystical faith. What they want is to eradi¬ 
cate the Chinese-ness of the Manchurian population 
and to weld them into a spiritual and cultural unity 
with the people of Japan. Hence—and surely I am 
not wrong in finding this highly significant ?—the at¬ 
tempt to institute in schools in Manchuria the com¬ 
pulsory worship of Confucius. It would not be 
appropriate to institute the specifically Japanese 
cults, for Manchukuo is, in name, a free and auton¬ 
omous state, entirely independent of Japan. But 
Confucius is a Chinese sage whom all Chinese honor. 
Let the same principle of the state religion, that yet 
is not religion, be applied here. I heard of a most 
illuminating speech made to a group of school teach¬ 
ers by a leading Japanese official, the burden of 
which was that they must strive to get the recogni¬ 
tion of the state as the first obligation to be acknowl¬ 
edged—then, he handsomely admitted, “ religion 
would not stray from the path.” 

How can there fail to be conflict between such a 


CHINA 45 

policy, ruthlessly carried out, and any church that 
is true to its message and duty ? 

I have suggested that these considerations may 
not unfairly be applied not only to Manchuria but 
to the wider field of China, south of the wall. It was 
my fortune to be in Peiping just before what was 
humorously called “ autonomy ” was launched, and 
to be in Nanking during those anxious days when, 
through the firmness of the Nanking authorities, the 
negotiations about the North had been transferred 
from the Japanese generals to the diplomats and the 
Japanese ambassador was closeted with General 
Chiang Kai-shek. I was able to gain at least some 
insight into the problem as the Chinese saw it, and 
I make no pretense that my sympathies were not 
deeply engaged by the Chinese in their time of rack¬ 
ing anxiety. 

I do not think that there is any reasonable doubt 
that the present rulers of Japan desire to establish 
a hegemony over the whole of China (I am not 
thinking of Tibet, Sinkiang and other outlying parts 
for long subject to nothing but a titular Chinese 
sovereignty). They do not think in terms of con¬ 
quest and annexation, but of the exercise of a com¬ 
pulsion over the whole of Chinese political and 
economic life, of which the ground will be the ex¬ 
istence of a reserve of force far greater than anything 
that China can command. All the polite phrases 
about desiring “ sincerity ” in China, about a com¬ 
mon front against communism, about the repres¬ 
sion of anti-Japanese activity, mean in effect that 
the life of China is to be directed toward Japan, 
that it is to be turned away from the West, and that in 


46 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

all the greater matters of national life and the major 
concerns of statesmanship China shall obey the be¬ 
hest of Japan. There will then be, as is reiterated 
times without number, peace in eastern Asia. 

It is important that those who care for the freedom 
of China recognize the elements of weakness in the 
Chinese situation. Professor Tawney has pointed 
out that there has never been in China any great 
politically educative system such as that which Rome 
imposed on Europe, leaving behind it, long after 
Rome had perished, the sense of the res publica, of 
the majesty of the common law. China is, in conse¬ 
quence, a race and a civilization rather than a state ; 
she has not had the tradition of the great state, and 
she has, for geographical reasons among others, never 
had the clash with the outer world that made the 
European states. Now she has come into a world 
of militant nationalism ; in economics as well as in 
certain other departments of life she has had to leap 
from the fourteenth century into the twentieth, and 
she is not a state in the sense in which Japan is a 
state. Traditions of social morality that worked not 
too badly in a vast community whose general stability 
was untroubled from without for centuries at a time, 
the exaltation of the claims of the family, the apoth¬ 
eosis of the literary scholar—these and many other 
ancient traits of the national character need now to 
be modified if China is to be able to assert her na¬ 
tional right in time. 

I think that a great many Japanese have honestly 
come to the conviction that China cannot organize 
herself in the modern world, and that if Japan does 
not take on the task the predatory West will. On the 


CHINA 


47 


other hand, I find an increasing number of foreign 
observers who believe that China only needs to be 
given a fair chance, and who are greatly impressed 
by the moral as well as the technical quality of the 
men who labor in the harness of the Nanking govern¬ 
ment. 

It is easy to twit that government with its lack of 
effective control over the whole of China. It is re¬ 
markable that its writ runs as far as it does. There 
is no other Chinese government conceivable; its 
work in improving communications, by road and air, 
has been notable ; it has greatly reduced in the last 
two years the communist enclaves in certain parts of 
the south and west; it has faced the rural needs with 
vision and resolution ; its dealing with the Canton 
revolt of 1936 was, if difficult for the outsider to 
comprehend, undeniably effective. 

To avoid accusations of anti-Japanese activity it 
has had the courage to submit its own people, their 
newspapers and books, to a virtual censorship in the 
interests of Japan. It has never been confronted 
with specific demands from Japan which it could ac¬ 
cept or reject, and know what it had done. Even 
the three demands of Mr. Hirota when Japanese 
foreign minister—recognition of Manchukuo, a com¬ 
mon front with Japan against communism, sincere 
abolition of all anti-Japanese activity—are, all but 
the first, vague. Already the organized smuggling in 
the north has decreased to a ruinous extent the reve¬ 
nues of the Chinese government, while the illicit 
traffic in narcotic drugs, in which Manchukuo plays 
a large part, has attracted the alarmed attention of 
the world. I was told by a good authority that there 


48 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

are two hundred thousand drug addicts in the city of 
Tientsin alone, and eight hundred thousand in the 
Tientsin area. 

North China—comprising the five provinces north 
of the Yellow river—contains over half of China’s 
coal reserves, the same proportion of her iron re¬ 
serves if Manchuria is not counted, nearly half of 
her supplies of wheat and other grains, nearly half of 
her railways and a fifth of her population. 1 To unite 
this area with Manchuria, Korea and Japan might 
be a strength economically to Japan—though it ap¬ 
pears that, even there, a party exists that strongly 
prefers economic and trade expansion among the 
more thickly populated and prosperous southern 
regions—but it would be a ruinous blow to China, 
and no Chinese government can assent to it and 
survive. To press such a demand to the end would 
probably mean that everything left in China that 
could move and plan would unite with the Chinese 
communists, whose anti-Japanese feelings are not in 
doubt—an ironical outcome for Japanese policy. 

But what can China do ? This is the question that 
is in every mouth. Ought we to fight ? Is it right 
to fight ? Even though we know that we are far 
inferior to Japan in military power, is it not better 
to fight than to yield to demands that we and all the 
world know to be unjust ? 

Some minds are turning—I found this in Nanking 
—to a middle course which yet would not be merely 
a temporizing between resistance and submission. It 
might be possible for the Chinese government to try 
in the firmest possible way to reach an agreement, 
frankly yielding any points on which the special 

1 From E. M. Gull in the Nineteenth Century, August, 1936. 


CHINA 


49 


needs and position of Japan might entitle her to be 
heard, provided they did not injure China, and mak¬ 
ing clear in the most public way the grounds on 
which, in the interests of the country, they could go 
no further. If this should prove fruitless, then let 
China, while publicly refusing as unjust the demands 
made upon her and avoiding war which, as things 
are, could only bring upon her the most terrible 
suffering, seek to organize every kind of moral re¬ 
sistance. 

This course would be very difficult to follow, much 
more difficult in the initial stages than a resort to 
war. It would demand not only the highest moral 
courage but a measure of unity in the country, or in 
enough of the country to make it effective. It would 
not be easy to hold together the vocal elements in 
support of such a policy, for a large part of the stu¬ 
dent population, so much more influential than in 
Western lands, is wholeheartedly for war. Further, 
the enemies of China know how to stir up trouble 
behind the lines, so that they may with a show of 
reason demand to come in and restore order. Never¬ 
theless, a resort to war would, it is certain, lead to 
the most terrible suffering and disorganization 
throughout the country and could not but end in the 
disappearance of every type of free Chinese leader¬ 
ship ; while the alternative of submission would 
immediately destroy the present government, which 
would lose support on all hands. 

Let us now, supposing that China is left in free¬ 
dom to put her house in order, consider some of the 
things that cry out to be done. China is an agricul¬ 
tural country, and the growth of industrialism, while 
in certain regions a perceptible factor in economic 


50 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

life, is still relatively small. It is indicative of the 
comparatively small place as yet taken by the “ great 
industry ” that four-fifths of the cotton cloth used in 
China is the product of the hand loom. The com¬ 
bination of evils under which the villager labors 
staggers the imagination. Debt, high rents, lack of 
communications, illiteracy are some of them. The 
sheer cheapness of human labor strikes the onlooker 
as symbolical of the conditions of life in the country 
districts. It has been estimated that 20 per cent of 
the population of China is occupied in transport. 
One would think that the conditions of life under 
which the ricksha men in the cities carry on their 
work would make it impossible for the firms to re¬ 
cruit any pullers, but it appears that the life is better 
than that from which they come. 

When we find that the peasants pay, on the aver¬ 
age, one-half of their crops in rent for the use of 
their land, it ceases to be a matter for surprise that 
there are “ no-rent ” movements. Here is Professor 
Tawney’s description of the rural scene in much of 
China : 

Over a large area of China the rural population 
suffers horribly through the insecurity of life and 
property. It is taxed by one ruffian who calls him¬ 
self a general, by another, by a third, and, when it 
has bought them off, still owes taxes to the govern¬ 
ment ; in some places actually more than twenty 
years’ taxation has been paid in advance. It is 
squeezed by dishonest officials. It must cut its 
crops at the point of the bayonet, and hand them 
over without payment to the local garrison, though 
it will starve without them. It is forced to grow 


CHINA 


5 1 


opium in defiance of the law, because its military 
tyrants can squeeze heavier taxation from opium 
than from rice or wheat, and make money, in addi¬ 
tion, out of the dens where it is smoked. It pays 
blackmail to the professional bandits in its neigh¬ 
borhood ; or it resists, and, a year later, when the 
bandits have assumed uniform, sees its villages 
burned to the ground. 

Mr. Tawney goes on : 

What is called the communist question is in 
reality, in most parts of the country, either a land 
question or a question of banditry provoked by 
lack of employment. It appears to be true, never¬ 
theless, that in China, as elsewhere, an elemental 
revolt against intolerable injustices has been or¬ 
ganized and given a doctrinal edge by political 
missionaries, and that certain regions . . . with an 
abnormally high percentage of tenants and acute 
agrarian discontent form enclaves of revolution, 
where such government as exists is conducted by 
communists. 2 

It is an indication of the spirit of the present 
government in Nanking that after driving out the 
communists from Kiangsi it embarked upon a vigor¬ 
ous policy of rural reconstruction. In this it has 
been notably aided by a group of Christians who 
have formed the Kiangsi Christian Rural Service 
Union, with headquarters at Lichwan. In this prov¬ 
ince a coherent attempt is being made to tackle the 
related problems of rural credit, land tenure, mar¬ 
keting, education, road-making and all the rest. It 
is interesting to find the dean of the theological 
2 R. H. Tawney, Land and Labor in China , pp. 73, 74. 


52 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

school of Yenching University leading this Lichwan 
experiment, and not less interesting to be told that 
after experiencing some opposition from local offi¬ 
cials the government made one of the union workers 
district administrator. 

Mass education is another huge task at which 
Chinese, both unofficially and with government in¬ 
itiative, are working vigorously. The best known 
name in this field—and deservedly so—is that of 
Dr. Y. C. James Yen of the mass education move¬ 
ment. I tracked Dr. Yen down until I found him 
addressing a Rotary club luncheon on a boat in the 
Canton river, and there heard him say—and he ad¬ 
hered to it under cross-examination—that it was 
possible for China, even with her present economic 
resources and organization, entirely to remove il¬ 
literacy. It is, by the way, both interesting and im¬ 
portant to find that Dr. Yen is now engaged not only 
in the conquest of illiteracy, taken by itself, but in 
a comprehensive scheme for rural uplift in which 
education plays a vital part. 

Such men enable us to look at the terrific Chinese 
problem with hope, for they have hope and they 
know more about the difficulties than we can. I 
think of another Chinese, whom I had known when 
he was a student in Britain, now in charge of the 
ricksha board of the Shanghai municipal council. 
As he told me of the reforms that had been initiated 
against the most unscrupulous opposition of power¬ 
ful vested interests—he smiled as he said that they 
had offered a reward for his murder—I could not but 
feel it desperately wrong that such men should not 
be left free to do their best for their country. They 


CHINA 


53 


may not be many, and it is fair to say that too many 
of the scholar class have been prepared to profit by 
the Chinese tradition of respect for the literati with¬ 
out doing anything in return, but they are an earnest 
of what may be. 

While the major problem of China’s reconstruc¬ 
tion lies in the rural areas, it should not be forgotten 
that in a country with a teeming population, pressing 
ruthlessly on the land, there must be a growth in in¬ 
dustry if there is to be any raising of the level of life. 
This, of course, depends even more upon the con¬ 
tinuance of peace and satisfactory political arrange¬ 
ments than does the rural development, for a 
measure of foreign participation is inevitable. But 
it need not be assumed that this means for China a 
great increase of the big factory, crowded into a few 
areas. To some ways in which these problems are 
being faced I shall return again. 3 

What of religion in China ? I think that there is 
an unmistakable turning of people to religion, and it 
seems to be due, as one would expect, to the tremen¬ 
dous difficulties by which the nation is confronted. 
One hears, as in Japan, of a great development in 
new sects, many of them blended of Taoist and Bud¬ 
dhist as well as of animistic ideas. The most im¬ 
portant movement, however, is the lay revival in 
Buddhism. It does not seem to have affected the 
Western-educated classes to any great extent, though 
there are important exceptions and some Christians 
of education have embraced Buddhism. But it is a 
movement of middle and upper class Chinese, men 
and women, apart largely from the monks and nuns 
3 See Chap. VIII. 


54 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

of the monasteries, formed into brotherhoods and 
sisterhoods and trying to learn the wisdom of the 
Buddhist books and to find there consolation and 
guidance for the perplexities of the present day. 
Their leaders are in some cases reforming monks, 
such as the well known T’ai-hsu, and they have 
adopted many of the methods of Christian activity. 
T’ai-hsu considers that Christianity may perhaps be 
regarded as a special form of Mahayana Buddhism 
given to the Western races. But this friendliness is 
unusual, for the spreading of Christian ideas among 
a large number of intelligent Buddhists not only has 
caused them to examine more rigorously their own 
books but has led them to a vigorous opposition to 
Christianity as the only effective rival of Buddhism. 

Dr. K. L. Reichelt, whose Christian mission to 
Buddhists at Kowloon is a wonderful example of 
great scholarship joined to evangelistic fervor, be¬ 
lieves that this lay revival of Buddhism is the most 
important religious movement in China apart from 
the Christian church. He finds in it a certain number 
of Christians who have come to believe that Chris¬ 
tianity is merely a pragmatic business, that churches 
are all “ drives ” and “ campaigns,” and that it offers 
no place to the man who wants deep and quiet medi¬ 
tation. Others testify to the same thing. Here are 
men—many of them middle aged ex-officials—who 
find in the Buddhist metaphysic and its teaching 
about desire and the abolition of the self the key to 
the woes of the world. At the same time there are 
Buddhist scholars in Dr. Reichelt’s institute who are 
finding their way to the truth as it is in Jesus. 

Among the student classes there seems to be gen- 


CHINA 


55 


eral agreement that the choice lies between Chris¬ 
tianity and some non-religious position. There is 
much evidence that the confident humanism so lately 
the mode has weakened in the present national plight, 
and that young men are not so sure as they were that 
“ science and socialism will save the state ”—a great 
slogan not so long ago. I listened with amazement 
to the story told to the executive committee of the 
National Christian Council of China by three Chris¬ 
tian professors who had made a tour of a great many 
colleges and universities, holding in all of them evan¬ 
gelistic meetings. They found that the former 
hostility to Christianity had vanished ; there was 
plenty of criticism of what the students knew as 
Christianity, but also, and far more important than 
that, a keen desire to find whether in the gospel of 
Christ there might not be both a way of understand¬ 
ing life with all its pain and difficulty, and also a way 
of living. They found this spirit at least as much 
among the students in the government colleges as in 
those of the Christian institutions. They estimated 
that in the course of their campaign they had ad¬ 
dressed or otherwise come into contact with one hun¬ 
dred and fifty thousand students and youths, and they 
summed up their impressions by saying, in Miss P. S. 
Tseng’s words, “ These youths are thirsting for a 
spiritual change and they are trying to find out 
whether Christianity can supply it.” Miss Tseng de¬ 
fines the major conflicts with which young China is 
concerned in a series of antitheses : Materialism 
versus spiritual reality—China cries out for more and 
more science, but students are coming to feel that 
more than science is needed to save them and their 


56 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

country from destruction. State control versus indi¬ 
vidual rights—dictatorships are fashionable and 
China needs a strong central government, but has not 
personal freedom a sacred meaning ? Ultra-national- 
ism versus internationalism—China needs intense pa¬ 
triotism, but must one suspect and hate all nations 
but one’s own ? War versus peace—China has always 
honored peace, but war seems to be the only way out, 
and yet Christ’s teaching suggests another way. Com¬ 
munism versus Christianity—much of the communis¬ 
tic ideal seems to be taken from Christianity, and 
both aim at a world revolution, so that students won¬ 
der which has the future. 4 

There is another direction in which the breaking 
out of the religious spirit is to be seen in China, 
namely, the remarkable growth of a revivalist type 
of preaching and fellowship in a considerable part of 
the country. Such movements as the Little Flock, or 
the remarkable work of Dr. John Sung, are cases in 
point. Invariably these movements proceed upon 
the foundation of a highly conservative theology and 
view with suspicion all human learning. They are 
divisive in their impact upon the ordinary Christian 
congregation. Where a congregation has become im¬ 
bued with their spirit there is an almost complete 
breach between it and any group of Christian stu¬ 
dents in a college or school. (I saw more than one 
distressing case of this myself during my short stay.) 
But the fact remains that, when all this has been said, 
souls are being converted to God through these 
means, and ardent life and power carry their own at¬ 
tractive quality everywhere. I cannot count the num- 

4 See Chinese Recorder, April, 1936. 


CHINA 


57 

ber of occasions on which Chinese pastors raised with 
me in conversation, or in semiformal conference, the 
question of the attitude they should take toward these 
movements. I could only say that where souls are 
converted to God there is a work of the Holy Spirit, 
and that it is for us who differ from the methods and 
from the setting of the message to examine ourselves 
to find in what ways we lack a truth and a power that 
others have. 

Education presents important problems to Chinese 
Christianity. The proportion of the whole educa¬ 
tion provision in China which the Christian bodies 
supply is still considerable (there are 3500 students in 
18 Christian colleges out of a total of 40,000 students 
in the whole of China, and 196 middle schools with 
30,000 pupils out of a total of 1892 with 400,000 pu¬ 
pils) . But this proportion has decreased rapidly in 
recent years as the resources of the state and of private 
Chinese generosity have been opened up, and it must 
decrease further. It is in quality, as has often been 
said, that the Christian contribution must be made, 
and this will involve a concentration and elimination 
for which missionaries and Christians in China are 
no more ready than those in other lands—which is 
to say, hardly at all ! But in addition there are spe¬ 
cial problems imposed by government regulations. 
Registration has now been accepted by many of the 
mission institutions. It carries with it obedience to 
the regulations concerning religious instruction. In 
primary schools no teaching of religion is permitted. 
In middle schools and colleges it may be offered as an 
elective subject—a system, of course, entirely differ¬ 
ent from the “ conscience clause ” of India. It would 


58 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

seem that if religious instruction is permissible at all 
it is obviously more important for the very young, 
but when I urged this upon an eminent (and 
friendly) official I was told that the government con¬ 
sidered that religion should not be taught until stu¬ 
dents had reached an age at which they could fitly 
make up their minds on these matters. The ortho¬ 
doxy on this point—it is always uttered with the air 
that accompanies the promulgation of obvious truth 
—is perhaps in China to be traced to Mr. Bertrand 
Russell. The policy would seem to entail, at least 
when applied to private schools which receive no aid 
from the state, a plain interference with civil liberty. 
However, people in China have their own ways of 
doing things, and I am bound to say that no educator 
with whom I spoke was in any doubt about the fact 
that through his school or college and in connection 
with it he had abundant opportunity for all the reli¬ 
gious work he had it in him to do. I should add that 
a good deal of evidence exists to show that there is 
genuine friendliness in official quarters to the Chris¬ 
tian schools, and that they are welcomed. 

One may here mention the “New Life” movement, 
with which General Chiang Kai-shek himself has been 
greatly concerned. It is an attempt to instill into the 
people a certain modicum of ethical principle, in 
some ways harking back to the Confucian ideals of 
manners and social rectitude, and in the areas where 
special rural reconstruction is being carried out the 
New Life ideas are being pressed. Some Christians 
hold that the movement ought to be warmly backed 
by the churches ; others feel that it is shallow ; some 
call it fascist—these are left-wing people who suspect 


CHINA 


59 


General Chiang and his government. I should doubt 
whether it is likely to be a considerable force, for the 
main reason that in a situation so grave as that in 
which China stands religion has to be tremendous or 
nothing. 

There are two fundamental needs, I think, that 
must be met by Christianity in China. One is for 
depth in religion—depth that is both spiritual and 
intellectual. The other is for the spirit of commu¬ 
nity. One might put it otherwise and say theology 
and the church, but that might rouse angry passions. 
If it is true that among the many issues confronting 
the ardent and disillusioned youth of China is that be¬ 
tween Christianity and communism ; if they have got 
away from the foolish crudity which would suggest 
that Christianity defends one social order and com¬ 
munism another, and have come to realize that each 
in its own way claims to give a true account of the 
meaning of life—then it is imperative that the Chris¬ 
tian faith in its depth and fullness be taught to such 
minds. Again, if it is true that some who have been 
Christians have become Buddhists because they found 
in Christianity only a pragmatic address to life and in 
Buddhism a pro founder dealing with the great ques¬ 
tions that have always vexed the minds of men, what 
graver criticism could be made ? I was reminded, 
when this was said to me, of the remark made by a 
deeply devout Hindu after a long conversation with 
a group of Continental scholars at an international 
student gathering in India. “ I never knew,” he said, 
“ that Christians had a cosmogony.” There are, I 
dare say, more important things than cosmogonies, 
but it is not worthy of the Christian faith that thought- 


60 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

ful souls should be able to conceive of it as merely a 
practical scheme of living, apparently agnostic on the 
ultimate questions. We are conscious enough in the 
Western world of the need for a continual and radical 
labor of thought on the message of the Christian re¬ 
ligion ; we recognize how the categories of human 
thought change, and we know how easy it is for Chris¬ 
tian theology and apologetic to become a mere churn¬ 
ing up of old controversies, learned and unprofitable. 
In China (and throughout all the East) there is the 
same onset of the modern world with its materialism 
and its new love of authority, its myths before which 
it bows down, its economic terror and its sense of de¬ 
feat. But the ancient cultures are present in the 
background, and in many minds the new secularism 
is built upon a debris utterly different from the pre¬ 
conceptions of the Western mind. There is, there¬ 
fore, a crying need for more theology and better 
theology. 

The church, as fact and idea alike, is little under¬ 
stood, it seems, by many Chinese. One meets eminent 
Christians, of unimpeachable conviction and enthu¬ 
siasm, who seem hardly to belong to any visible com¬ 
munion, and do not quite see why they should, except 
that it is usually done. I distrust all general apho¬ 
risms (especially applied to nations or to women), 
but I remember having been told that “ the Chinese 
understand the school, they do not understand the 
church.” On the one hand you have a certain num¬ 
ber of church bodies of which their critics say that 
they are concerned only with maintaining themselves, 
and that they are valueless for the great causes to 
which Christians in China ought to be giving them- 


CHINA 


6l 


selves. On the other, you find men of great authority 
urging that what matters is not the church but the 
“ Christian movement ” in China, and that it is in 
the latter, not in the former, that living power is to 
be found. We shall come back later to this funda¬ 
mental theme. I would say here only that the church, 
in its true meaning and according to the New Testa¬ 
ment vision of it, seems to me to be fundamental to 
the whole Christian witness in China, and that it is 
most necessary that impatience with a multitudinous 
denominationalism, itself a travesty of the truth, 
should not be allowed to divert attention from what 
has been vital all down the ages to the Christian wit¬ 
ness. 

It is not hard, then, to see the hope and the peril 
of Christianity in China. With all the weaknesses 
that can be attributed to it—and most of them are the 
result of Western limitations—it is arresting the at¬ 
tention of those on whom the full tragedy of China 
most presses. It offers a gospel of which the center is 
One whom all men, be they haters or lovers of him, 
instinctively recognize to be alive in their own world. 
Suppose that China were to try in the face of Japan 
the method of united moral resistance, following on 
an earnest attempt to make honorable peace, that I 
mentioned earlier as occupying some of the best Chi¬ 
nese minds. It would be difficult to carry out for two 
reasons : it would demand great moral strength and 
willingness to stand to the end for what is right in 
principle ; and it would mean holding together the 
whole country, in the face of ancient rivalries and 
without the stimulus of a common warlike adventure. 
I would not claim absurd things for the Chinese 


62 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Christians, but I think that they have something to 
bring to a great nation at such a time of testing. 

For these reasons there may be hard and perilous 
times before the Chinese churches. I suggested early 
in this chapter that it was not by accident that the 
Christians in Manchuria were the objects of the wrath 
of the state, for they could not but be a standing con¬ 
tradiction of the twin ideas of totalitarian state au¬ 
thority and an introverted nationalism. If these 
influences should, by one path or another, come to 
dominate China, it is to be feared that the church 
would again be the most obvious obstacle, just because 
it is in some measure integrated over all China, it is 
linked with all the world through its missionary con¬ 
nections, and it owns an exclusive allegiance to its 
Master which it cannot barter away without conscious 
apostasy. 

I read recently a sermon by my friend Professor 
T. C. Chao of Yenching on “ The Message of the 
Cross.” His final word was this : “ But what is the 
message for the church and for individual Christians 
when the issue is faced squarely ? It is very short. 
It can be summed up in the one single word ‘ martyr¬ 
dom/ ” I have found other hearts heavy with the 
same thought. 

Nevertheless, I would rather end this chapter on 
another note. We can easily drift into thinking that 
because certain tendencies seem inevitable and men 
are getting ready to fight on one side or the other of 
the issues they have stated, there is a fundamental 
necessity in the matter. There is no such necessity. 
It is still folly, the result of the blindness and timidity 
and selfishness of men. The Christian way of peace 


CHINA 


63 

and understanding is not a foolish quixotry offered to 
a world essentially alien to such thoughts ; it is the 
wisdom of God. There is therefore always a task of 
reconciliation. But this is utterly different from all 
mere dexterity in formula-finding or uneasy strad¬ 
dling between opposites. It is based upon the belief 
that the true interests of men in a world that God 
made are reconcilable, and it has behind it the knowl¬ 
edge of a supreme reconciliation wrought not by the 
act of man but by that of God. 

There are many Christian people in the Far East 
today who recognize that upon those who believe in 
the divine principle of reconciliation there does lie 
a special burden in these days. It is a fact of the 
highest importance that in Japan and Korea, in Man¬ 
churia and China, there are Christians, men and 
women, some of whom have learned to know and 
trust and love one another across the barriers of na¬ 
tionality. There are also Western Christians in these 
Eastern lands who have friendships in more than one 
country which transcend the national lines of cleav¬ 
age. It should be possible for some way to be devised 
whereby, in the humblest spirit and with no thought 
of anything but the service of the peoples, a spirit of 
realism in the discussion of difficulties and of recon¬ 
ciliation in the face of past antagonisms might be con¬ 
veyed and interpreted. To some such service, not 
less valuable because it must be rendered in quietness 
and obscurity, some among the Christians of the Far 
East may be called, and in it they should be upheld 
by the prayers of the universal church. 


Ill 


INDIA 

I T IS an instructive experience for one who has 
lived in India to return to it by way of the Far 
East. Light is thrown on many Indian problems by 
a glimpse of the very different conditions of Japan, 
China or Java—the last an entrancing country, of 
which within the scope of this book I can say nothing, 
though the study of a land where government and 
Christian effort alike are so largely in the hand of a 
single people, the Dutch, is full of suggestion. Mem¬ 
ories of Japan, Korea and Manchuria make a Briton 
wonder how far he has been overcritical of govern¬ 
ment policies which he does not condemn when they 
come from his own people ; not that the British gov¬ 
ernment propagates emperor worship, but a good deal 
of the Korean complaint against the Japanese is not 
unlike that of the Indians against the British. Or 
again, the roads, the railways, and the homogeneous, 
efficient administration of India suggest how much 
China has yet to accomplish in that regard, while also 
one cannot but recognize that independence stimu¬ 
lates public spirit as subjection can never do. A for¬ 
mer Indian civil servant was quoted to me in Hong 
Kong as saying, “ You may think this strange as 
coming from an Indian civilian, but the thing that 
impresses me on coming from China proper to Hong 
Kong is the lack of public spirit.” 

64 


INDIA 


65 

It is not easy to describe the temper of Indian pub¬ 
lic life in these days. I was conscious of a good deal of 
disillusionment and loss of spirit among a number of 
those with whom I talked. In the political sphere the 
five years that had passed since I had seen India had 
been packed with event. I had left on the very mor¬ 
row of the agreement signed between Lord Irwin 
(now Lord Halifax) and Mr. Gandhi, and I well re¬ 
member the sense of relief that was felt when the news 
came through. Since then had come the second and 
third Round Table conferences, the laying of the 
British government’s proposals before Parliament in 
the form of the White Paper, the long discussions and 
the report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, the 
Government of India Bill, the intense feelings aroused 
in Great Britain by the campaign of Mr. Churchill 
and his friends, and then the passing of the act. They 
had been very full years, viewed from the standpoint 
of British constitutional action. On the Indian side 
they had been not less full, and much more tragic. 
First there was the participation of the Indian Na¬ 
tional Congress in the Round Table sessions, but in 
the sole person of Mr. Gandhi, delegate plenipoten¬ 
tiary. Hope had risen in many quarters that on his 
return to India there might be a new attempt at con¬ 
structive peace, but this hope died as war was declared 
between the government of India and the Congress 
(a contest for which a good many on each side seem 
to have been spoiling) and a period of vigorous re¬ 
pression ensued. There followed the smashing of 
civil disobedience ; then came the rise of the “ un¬ 
touchables ” issue into a foremost place in public life 
through the increasing identification of Mr. Gandhi 


66 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

with it; then the growth of communal feeling; a 
general disapproval of the new act, though not 
from uniform reasons, and now a widespread discus¬ 
sion of the problem whether there should be active 
cooperation with the new constitution or obstruction, 
office-acceptance or boycott. 

To many people it seems that neither constitutional 
action nor the chosen way of Mr. Gandhi—non¬ 
violent non-cooperation—has brought anything worth 
having. The fruit of the former, they feel, is the new 
act, and I must in honesty say that I have met with 
virtually no Indian enthusiasm for it. Keen nation¬ 
alists look at the undoubtedly powerful “ safeguards ” 
and laugh at the idea that there has been any real 
transfer of power. Socially progressive people fear 
that the large share of power given under the federa¬ 
tion plan to the princes’ nominees will limit the pos¬ 
sibilities of the kind of progress they want. Liberals 
are nearly as bitter in denunciation as congressmen, 
for they feel that their cooperation has been flouted. 
It seems reasonably certain that there will be a large 
measure of cooperation with the new institutions, 
but it would be useless, in my judgment, to pretend 
that there is any enthusiasm. 

Equally disappointing to its supporters have been 
the fruits of the revolutionary movement. I call it 
that, for I think that in essence the Congress today is 
out for a revolutionary change. It has for some years 
ceased to believe that much could come from nego¬ 
tiation with the British government; and its leaders, 
with engaging frankness, explain that they do not 
expect the British, any more than others, to give up 
voluntarily the power they now possess, or to yield 


INDIA 


67 

place for any cause except that they recognize a new 
power in the Indian people. Readers of that intensely 
interesting book, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s auto¬ 
biography, 1 will recall the sense of exhilaration with 
which the leaders of the civil disobedience movement 
entered on their campaign in 1930, and the high hopes 
reposed in the “ non-violent ” method. But the Con¬ 
gress has had to face the fact that the government had 
taken up the challenge, and that its vigorous cam¬ 
paign of repression had succeeded. 

I put these things down because it seems to me very 
important that British people should recognize the 
existence of a great deal of bitterness in India. It is 
not at present focused in any movement, and it could 
be dissolved, I believe, by generous action. But it is 
there. One of the main effects of the campaign of 
opposition to the India bill waged in Great Britain 
has been that the British public has never listened to 
the Indian case. It has believed that it had to choose 
between a government measure characterized by 
great and perhaps rash generosity, and an opposition 
based upon motives of caution or of economic nation’ 
alism. That there was an Indian criticism, as strong 
as Mr. Churchill’s though entirely opposite to it, was 
very little appreciated. 

If Indians imbued with political enthusiasm come 
to be convinced that neither in constitutional action 
nor in the Gandhi technique of “ non-violence ” lies 
any hope of success, there is a danger that they may 
choose a third way, that of revolutionary violence. 
I do not think this likely, for terrorism is alien to the 
Indian temper, and the existing terrorist movement 
1 Jawaharlal Nehru : An Autobiography (Lane). 


68 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 


has been mainly a Bengal phenomenon and attribu¬ 
table to certain special influences. But we must recog¬ 
nize that there has come into being a strong left-wing 
political group within the Congress—led by no less a 
person than the president of the Congress, Jawaharlal 
Nehru—which has learnt something from the experi¬ 
ence of the social revolution in the West and will un¬ 
doubtedly try to use the instrument of social unrest as 
a political weapon. In fairness to them I must add 
that in doing so they believe that they are taking the 
only way that will benefit the very poor. To men of 
the stamp of Jawaharlal Nehru the economic issue is 
the overmastering thing, and he sees clearly that, as it 
has grown up, even the Indian National Congress is 
an expression of the desire of the bourgeoisie to get 
into their own hands the power now held by the 
British. He believes in non-violence only as a method 
right in certain circumstances ; his outlook is in all 
essentials identical with that of the social revolution¬ 
ary leaders of other lands, who propose to take every 
opportunity to secure power that events may offer. 
There is nothing astonishing in this, and Mr. Nehru’s 
book is so simple and honest that it is impossible not 
to respect the quality of character there revealed. But 
we must face the fact that at present many of the 
keenest and finest spirits are moving toward the so¬ 
cial revolution and away from either political co¬ 
operation with institutions of British provenance or 
the mystical ideas of Mr. Gandhi. 

Perhaps this is the place to say what has so often 
been said, that much depends upon the quality of men 
that Britain can send to India in the different types of 
service, and upon the disappearance of the still strong 


INDIA 


6 9 

social separateness between Indians and British. I 
think that Pandit Nehru is right when he derides the 
excessive attention given by certain public men to 
the personal element in government—as though In¬ 
dian history depended upon a gesture here or a con¬ 
versation there. But it is true, more true than the 
pandit will admit, that great harm has been done by 
the social exclusiveness of the British. (I was inter¬ 
ested to find a new line being taken by Indians about 
the question of exclusion from clubs: European so¬ 
ciety, it is now said, is overrated and the clubs not 
worth joining 1 ) The tragedy of it is that there is 
nothing rare or difficult about Indo-British friend¬ 
ship ; the two peoples seem to have been made for 
each other, and no race on earth has a deeper affec¬ 
tion to give to those whom it takes to its heart than 
has the Indian. Something of that power of affection 
to transmute the public scene was manifested at the 
time of the death of the late king. When the news 
arrived in India shops began to shut immediately, by 
the spontaneous action of the people themselves. In 
Calcutta, at the time of the memorial services in the 
churches, two immense processions moved from the 
heart of the Indian city to the maidan, or public 
park : one of Hindus and one of Moslems. A Hindu 
judge of the high court headed one procession, bare¬ 
foot and clothed in Hindu funeral raiment. He was 
joined en route by the Maharaja of Burdwan, also 
barefoot. The feeling of personal loss was evident on 
all hands, and the different parties seem to have felt 
that they were united with one another and with the 
British and the government in something that wholly 
transcended politics. 


70 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

One aspect of the political stalemate and disillu¬ 
sionment is the rise of the communal problem. I 
believe that in the long run the antagonism of the 
communities—Hindu and Moslem, Sikh and Mos¬ 
lem, Brahman and non-Brahman—will be dissolved 
by the rise of new groupings based on genuinely po¬ 
litical or economic differences ; to some extent already 
the communal acerbity has disappeared within the 
nationalist movement. But in the main the Congress 
is Hindu. The great Moslem territorial magnates are 
outside it, and since the communal award of the 
British prime minister in 1931 there has been a party 
of ardent Hindus whose determination to oppose the 
award is so great that they have pursued their activi¬ 
ties apart from the Congress, which has on the whole 
honestly tried to look beyond communal allegiance. 
It is easy to exaggerate the strength of this communal 
spirit, but there are some facts to be kept in mind. 
One is the power of religious animosity when two 
widely different religions, such as Hinduism and Is¬ 
lam, sway a mass of illiterate people among whom 
there are other lines of cleavage which roughly coin¬ 
cide with the religious. Hindus have a real horror of 
cow killing, and Moslems a real contempt for idola¬ 
try, but the dangers of popular rioting are greater if 
there is simultaneously present an agrarian issue, with 
landlords of one faith and tenants of the other, or if, 
as in the Panjab, a great deal of the land debt is owed 
by Moslems to Hindus. I think it is fair also to say 
that when once the fateful decision is made (as, pace 
the Indian National Congress, I believe it has been 
made) to transfer power by stages to a popularly 
elected Indian legislature, there is certain to be a long 


INDIA 


7 1 


period of maneuvering for power. Some Hindus 
deeply believe that nothing is really Indian in India 
but the Hindu tradition and that the other communi¬ 
ties are, as it was unwisely put not long ago, “ guests.’* 
Moslems, in the face of that, do begin to doubt 
whether their own type of culture will get a fair 
chance to survive. Hindus, on the other hand, cannot 
help taking notice of the statements of some Moslem 
publicists who seem to think or dream only of an all- 
Moslem empire, in which a part of India would be 
included. 

But there is a certain amount of sheer insincerity 
about the whole business. The name of religion is 
invoked to cover purely secular animosities. There 
was in the Panjab when I was there in the spring a 
great Sikh-Moslem crux, widely debated everywhere, 
over certain property at Shahidganj. To judge by 
their public utterances you would gather that for each 
community the property under debate was unspeak¬ 
ably sacred, but I was told by two prominent men, one 
of each party, that the place had at certain times been 
used as a latrine by each community. They were, in 
fact, engaging in a trial of strength before the new 
reforms came in, and religion offered an excellent 
casus belli. 

It is this sort of thing that leaves one with the feel¬ 
ing that much of Indian political life is unreal, and 
that (here I agree with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru) the 
real issues in a country so poor, so illiterate and so 
tightly held by vested interests are social and eco¬ 
nomic. In certain respects the general economic po¬ 
sition of India is good ; her budget is balanced and 
her trade figures compare favorably with those of 


72 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

most of the world. But the country people have been 
through a terrible time in the depression, and the no¬ 
rent movement in the United Provinces, while taken 
up warmly by the Congress, was not primarily politi¬ 
cal but based upon the tragic condition of things in 
the rural areas of that great region. Doctors say that 
tuberculosis is increasing in India, at a time when in 
the West we are learning to conquer it; the reason 
seems to lie chiefly in malnutrition. I heard in 
Bengal of peasants reduced to eating boiled jute 
fiber. Rural debt is so great in some provinces that 
it is difficult to see how it can ever be discharged. 
Fortunately there is no lack of evidence that the 
government, headed by the viceroy, whose personal 
interest in rural questions is widely known, is awake 
to these issues. The avoidance of an agrarian revo¬ 
lution in the future depends, I feel, not only upon 
certain additions being made to the amenity and the 
efficiency of rural life, but also upon firm dealing 
with vested interests, some of which are deeply en¬ 
trenched in Indian society. 

There is everywhere a steady increase of concern 
about rural issues. The terrible illiteracy (even to¬ 
day not 10 per cent of the population can read and 
write) is recognized as something that can be and 
ought to be removed. If Dr. James Yen could say 
what he did about China, 2 it is hard to see why any¬ 
thing less should be expected in India. Here is one 
of the obvious opportunities for technique to come 
to the aid of good will. Much more is known in the 
world as a whole about the best way to teach read¬ 
ing, both to children and to adults, than was known a 
2 See p. 52. 


INDIA 


73 

few years ago, and it can be made available for the 
masses of Asia. Dr. Laubach 3 has shown in the Phil¬ 
ippines what amazing things can be accomplished 
when a good method is joined to resolution and en¬ 
thusiasm. Such workers as Dr. and Mrs. Harper at 
Moga in the Panjab have shown in their own sphere 
what inroads can be made upon illiteracy when the 
resources of the modern world are used. Of course, 
illiteracy is only one of a mass of evils—debt, drink, 
disease, superstition—under which the village labors, 
but no real advance among the people is possible un¬ 
less the burden of illiteracy is lifted. 

But I do not think that anyone will deny that the 
chief factor in the Indian rural situation in recent 
years has been the rise of a new consciousness among 
the untouchables, or depressed classes, numbering 
some fifty or sixty millions. The fundamental thing 
is that among these poor people themselves, not 
merely among others who care about them, a new de¬ 
termination has been born. Future historians will, I 
think, put much of this down to the credit of Mr. 
Gandhi, and it is indeed ironical that now, when his 
own labors in their behalf have helped to awaken 
them, they should be turning against the Hinduism of 
which he is so ardent and wholehearted a champion. 

Mr. Gandhi calls the untouchables harijans or 
“ men of God,” meaning, I think, that they are spe¬ 
cially dear to God. I have no shadow of doubt that 
in this matter Mr. Gandhi’s own deepest convictions 
and emotions are engaged. For him the evil of un- 
touchability—I have heard him refer to those who 
are not only “ untouchable ” and “ unapproachable ” 
3 See International Review of Missions , April, 1936. 


74 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

but “ unseeable ”—is no true part of Hinduism ; he 
would cease to be a Hindu tomorrow if he believed 
it were, and therefore it is for him a task both of 
compassion and of religious uprightness and truth to 
convince caste Hindus that they are wrong in holding 
to the idea and practice of untouchability, and to 
claim for the harijans the rights of Hindus. He 
has also combined his zeal for the use of homespun 
cloth and the resuscitation of village industries with 
his concern for the harijans, and the Indian Village 
Industries Association is his instrument for carrying 
his ideas broadcast through India. It is, of course, 
closely linked with Congress, and is for that reason 
the object of much suspicion on the part of the gov¬ 
ernment. 

While it is foolish to decry Mr. Gandhi’s efforts in 
this matter or to fail to recognize his burning sin¬ 
cerity, the results of the campaign have not been very 
encouraging. It is true that the untouchables’ case 
has now become a first-rate issue in Indian public life 
The method of stimulating social reform by occa¬ 
sional fasts is open to criticism, but it has the advan¬ 
tage, when employed by someone as much beloved by 
the mass of Indians as Mr. Gandhi, that it arrests uni¬ 
versal attention. Everyone knew that Mr. Gandhi 
was fasting in protest against the untouchables’ being 
given a separate electorate, as the prime minister’s 
award had decided. In the stress of public emotion 
caused by the fast the orthodox Hindu leaders agreed 
to new arrangements whereby, within the parliamen¬ 
tary seats reserved for Hindus, special provision was 
made for the election of representatives of the un¬ 
touchables. This was the gist of the Poona Pact, the 


INDIA 


75 

terms of which Dr. Ambedkar, the untouchables’ 
leader, has been so anxious to preserve even if the 
untouchables should abandon Hinduism. Probably 
no one else but Mr. Gandhi could have achieved so 
much in the time, faulty as the pact has since been 
shown to be. But inquiry in outcaste areas and 
among those deeply concerned with the issue does 
not reveal as great an advance as might be expected. 
There is a certain amount of spectacular inter-dining, 
new wells have been dug, schools have been opened 
to untouchables—all very much to the good. What 
remains doubtful is whether any true and deep 
change has come about in the Hindu mind. 

Dr. Ambedkar, the representative of the depressed 
classes at the third Round Table Conference, is in no 
doubt that Hindus cannot and will not substantially 
change. He accordingly announced, in a speech in 
October, 1935, at Nasik near Bombay, that he would 
not die a Hindu, and advised the depressed classes to 
follow his lead. He, like Mr. Gandhi, is sincerely 
concerned with the well-being of the depressed classes 
or “ exterior castes.” Mr. Gandhi believes that the 
way lies in purifying Hinduism; Dr. Ambedkar 
thinks that Hinduism is by nature incapable of de¬ 
cisive repentance, and that the only thing for the 
untouchables to do is to leave it. 

In a sense, it is now up to the caste Hindus. If 
Mr. Gandhi is right, and the “ exterior castes ” deeply 
desire to remain Hindu, which is their birthright and 
their historic faith, then the caste Hindus’ duty is 
obvious. Let them abolish untouchability, open the 
temples and uplift their sunken brethren. If they do 
not respond, Dr. Ambedkar’s case is proved. He for 


76 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

his part seems to be a practical-minded person, not 
much interested in the theoretical statements of di¬ 
vines about what the religions they expound ideally 
stand for. He is concerned with the social well-being 
of his community and attaches great importance to 
the political gains recently achieved by him on their 
behalf. The present position appears to be this. Dr. 
Ambedkar has repeatedly said that while he is deter¬ 
mined to leave Hinduism he does not yet know to 
what spiritual home he would advise his friends to 
resort. Meetings are being held in different parts of 
India at which the untouchables are urged to break 
with Hinduism. At Lucknow in May there was held 
a “ Depressed Classes Conference ” at which in addi¬ 
tion to their own discussions the delegates listened to 
speeches by the representatives of several religions. 
It is more than doubtful whether such meetings are 
of any value. This one was packed with Moslems 
who shouted down some of the non-Moslem speak¬ 
ers ; this did the Christian speakers, in particular, no 
harm in the eyes of the untouchables, and their 
speeches were dignified and truly religious, but it is 
an unseemly way in which to approach religious 
questions. 

In August, 1936, a sensation was caused by the 
publication 4 of correspondence between Dr. Ambed¬ 
kar and Dr. Moonje, the president of the Hindu 
Mahasabha, which is the political organization of 
Hinduism. Dr. Moonje undertook that if Dr. Am¬ 
bedkar would lead his followers into the Sikh fold 

4 The papers were communicated to the press by Mr. M. C. Rajah, 
a rival of Dr. Ambedkar for the leadership of the untouchables and 
a champion of Mr. Gandhi’s approach to the question. 


INDIA 


77 


the Hindus would accept this, and would press the 
government to extend the political provisions for 
the representation of the untouchables (gained in 
the Poona Pact) to these classes as “ Neo-Sikh ” ! Dr. 
Ambedkar’s supporting memorandum took the sur¬ 
prising line of argument that while either Islam or 
Christianity would be better than Sikhism for the 
outcastes, considered from their point of view, yet 
the interests of Hinduism and the Hindu culture in 
India pointed to Sikhism. Islam or Christianity, he 
felt, would denationalize the untouchables ; for them 
to become Moslems would mean Moslem domina¬ 
tion, to become Christians would strengthen British 
rule. Sikhism was within the ambit of Hindu cul¬ 
ture ; let the Hindus recognize this and make up the 
financial limitations of the Sikhs whose own help to 
the untouchables could be but small. 

The full meaning of this curious episode is not yet 
clear, and it is possible that they are right who still 
claim that Dr. Ambedkar has a fuller appreciation of 
the meaning of religion than his involuntary revela¬ 
tions would indicate. What is of immense signifi¬ 
cance is the fact that a man in Dr. Moonje’s position 
should be convinced that the untouchables cannot be 
held within Hinduism except in a vague cultural 
sense. 

Behind these machinations there are afoot move¬ 
ments among the people far deeper and more ex¬ 
tensive than any we have known in recent years in 
India. It is a good many years since Bishop White- 
head of Madras compared the Indian mass movement 
toward Christianity with the labor movement in Eng¬ 
land, as an uprising of the underprivileged in the de- 


78 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

termination to claim the place due to them as human 
beings. It is an apt comparison, and even more so 
now that there is something stirring among the out- 
castes wider even than the mass movement into the 
church—with which I shall deal a little later. 

One proof of the wide extent of this outcaste move¬ 
ment and its independence of any one leader such as 
Dr. Ambedkar is to be found in the phenomenon of 
the Ezhavas’ movement in southwestern India. Here 
is a community of about a million (estimates vary), 
not technically untouchable though prevented from 
entering the temples, possessing in its upper strata a 
certain number of professional men. This entire 
community is “ on the move.” It has differences with 
the Hindus, partly religious, partly social, partly po¬ 
litical ; they are old and deep-seated, and the com¬ 
munity has possessed leaders who have gradually 
developed within it a keener corporate determina¬ 
tion than in the groups of untouchables proper in 
the rest of India. I should greatly doubt whether Dr. 
Ambedkar’s action has had anything at all to do with 
these Ezhavas’ determination to move. This mass 
feeling, compounded of many grievances, is slow to 
reach expression-point, but when it has at last done 
so it will be slow to die away. It is this that makes 
the increasing tendency of Indian depressed groups 
to move away from Hinduism so important and im¬ 
pressive. It looks as though only a great, immediate 
and widespread reform within caste Hinduism could 
change it. 

How is it with Indian religion ? Are there signs of 
that inward renewing in Hinduism and Islam which 
might enable them to meet the new time of testing ? 


INDIA 


19 


The backbone of Hinduism is the village caste life. 
It has gone on for centuries in the same way ; it is 
immensely tough, for it is not a doctrinal system nor 
a code of ethics, but the totality of the varied culture 
of an ancient people dwelling in half a million vil¬ 
lages. The only definition of Hinduism that I have 
ever heard that seemed to cover the facts was given by 
a Hindu : “ A Hindu is one who, having been born 
in caste, calls himself a Hindu.” But while there is 
no central dogma and no focal historical fact by his 
relation to which a man’s Hinduism can be tested, 
there is a whole mass of cults, doctrines and practices 
which together compose what one might call the 
Hindu atmosphere. Such are caste, reincarnation 
and the law of karma (cause and effect inexorable in 
the moral sphere), respect for Brahmans, worship of 
some at least of a pantheon of deities, reverence for 
the cow, and so on. I know of no definite proof that 
this village Hinduism is changing, but I am certain 
that it is being subjected, even in the villages, to in¬ 
fluences that must change it. The motor bus brings 
the villager into the country town and the town into 
the village. The severe economic pressure drives 
doctors and lawyers more and more into the villages, 
because they cannot all make a living in the towns. 
As the pressure on the land increases—and this is one 
of the major results of the decay of hand industries— 
more and more people have to go to the mines and 
the mills to work. They come back different, just as 
the tribesman goes back from the Rand or the copper 
mines of Rhodesia to his village a different man. 
They have been in the wider world, and the religion 
they know, with its moral sanctions and taboos, be- 


80 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

longs to the village and the simpler conditions where 
caste could be kept and a man knew his gods and 
their trees and holy places. 

It is in the greater centers that we must look to see 
if there be any readjustment of Hinduism to meet 
the claims of a new world. Take Benares, the great 
city of pilgrims and temples and the holy Mother 
Ganges. It is not easy to discern any signs of change 
there. Is there in all the world any holy place that 
more powerfully appeals to the sense of compassion ? 
Who that has seen it can forget the crowded bathing- 
ghats, the streams of pilgrims, the multitude of 
priests, the pride of the Brahmans, the squalor of the 
temples ? There is true religious yearning here, as 
the Christian workers who spend their days in con¬ 
tinuous talk with the pilgrims can testify, but no es¬ 
sential change in what Hinduism offers. In Benares 
there is a university, which among other glories pos¬ 
sesses as good scientific laboratories, especially in elec¬ 
trical engineering, as there are in India. There are in 
the place devout men, who use to the full such appa¬ 
ratus of religious growth as orthodox Hinduism af¬ 
fords, but the contrast between the modern scientific 
teaching and the naively orthodox Hinduism of the 
pandits is too great for the students, and they turn 
from religion with derision. They may still be keenly 
communal—though on the whole it is not the young 
who fan the fires of communal hatred—but com¬ 
munal loyalty is not religion, as we know well enough 
in the West. Yet they will turn out in hundreds to 
hear the Christian message preached by such a man 
as Dr. Stanley Jones. The only sign of radically new 
development within Hinduism that I have heard of 


INDIA 


81 


in Benares is the new temple of Mother India—con¬ 
taining simply a marble relief map of India and no 
other symbol of worship. 

The two “ acids of modernity ” that are eating into 
orthodox Hinduism are industrialism and education. 
Each of the great industrial areas is a maelstrom of 
humanity in which the cults and distinctions that are 
the essence of day-to-day Hindu living can no longer 
be maintained. Instead, there comes into the work¬ 
man’s mind, perhaps, some glimmering of new and 
intoxicating doctrine, of the leveling of distinctions 
and the abolition of priests and all the paraphernalia 
of religion that prevent the coming of the people’s 
rule. The industrial regions of India are not large, 
and although India is one of the eight major indus¬ 
trial countries and has more people employed in 
industry than the whole population of Spain, 
numerically these are only a fraction of the masses of 
the people. But they are an important fraction, for 
they, just as much as the Western-educated man, have 
in their own way been drawn into the orbit of West¬ 
ern civilization. 

The other disintegrating force is that of education, 
and it is unnecessary to elaborate here a point which 
is familiar to all. Macaulay was wrong in thinking 
that education would by itself destroy idolatry, and 
he shared to the full in the naivete of his time, which 
underestimated the historic strength of the Hindu 
system and too easily identified Christianity and the 
Western learning. But he was right in holding that 
Western education was essentially revolutionary in 
its relation to Hinduism. The ordinary young edu¬ 
cated man in India—and this is becoming more and 


82 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

more true of young women also—is without religion. 
The head of one of the best known student hostels in 
India, resorted to by an able type of man, told me 
that he did not think that a single one of his students 
had any religious sense at all. 

In times of great national exaltation, especially in 
the common enduring of hardship, such men turn 
back to religion. I have suggested that that is hap¬ 
pening in China now. But the spirit of disillusion¬ 
ment of which I wrote above does not help in the 
growth of religion. Nationalism sometimes has 
taken to itself some of the power and emotional 
content of religion, and one finds periods when Hin¬ 
duism is tacitly restated under the influence of nation¬ 
alist fervor, every good thing from whatever quarter 
being dutifully discovered within it. I may be 
wrong, but I do not feel that that is happening now 
in India very much. The men whom the young edu¬ 
cated people follow do not care for religion. Pandit 
Jawaharlal Nehru, for all his love and admiration of 
Mr. Gandhi, is obviously at a loss to know what he 
means by his insistent appeals to religion. On the 
other hand, we have such movements as the self- 
respect movement in south India which, beginning 
as a protest against the privileges of Brahmans, went 
on to develop along militantly antireligious lines, 
and now aims equally at the spreading of social re¬ 
form and the abolition of religion. 

It is said by Moslem leaders—it was said to me by 
some distinguished ones—that this is, if true, at least 
much less true of the educated younger Moslems. 
They have a more definite dogmatic faith to adhere 
to, and there are plenty of “ modernist ” Islamic 


INDIA 


83 

scholars who are offering an Islam attuned to modern 
needs. But in such a place as Aligarh it would be 
difficult, if I may judge by what I am told, to find 
much real Moslem devotion, whatever the loyalty to 
Islam as a community. 

And yet I believe it would be a profound mistake 
to underestimate the possible recuperative power of 
the old religions. Hinduism especially has shown 
again and again in its history how it can rise up in 
unsuspected power and embrace and absorb the new 
factor or the threatening obstacle. It can never do 
that to true Christianity, for reasons that we shall 
examine later, but it not only can but quite certainly 
will do just that to any pseudo-Christianity that de¬ 
serts the foolishness and stumbling block of the cross 
to commend itself more pleasantly to Hindu minds. 

It has been my own conviction, based on such stud¬ 
ies as I have been able to make, that Hinduism, be¬ 
cause of its failure to treat history seriously or to do 
justice to personality either in God or in man, must 
always fail in the long run to provide the moral dy¬ 
namic that India needs. I must in honesty say that 
there are two societies, one purely Hindu and the 
other virtually so, that seem to contradict this theory. 
One is the Ramakrishna mission, whose labors both 
in education and in every kind of social reform are 
well known in India. In times of famine and flood 
the Ramakrishna people are in the field always 
among the first, and some of their schools will com¬ 
pare with the best for educational alertness, self- 
criticism and efficiency. The other society, less well 
known, is that of the Radhasoamis at Agra, with 
branches in other parts of the country. I had the 


84 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

privilege of a talk with his holiness, the head of the 
society, and was, like others who have studied its ac¬ 
tivities, immensely impressed by the variety and 
quality of educational and industrial work done. 
Here are people who are based on what, with certain 
variations, is Hinduism, though they would admit a 
member who called himself a Christian if he accepted 
their fundamental doctrines and placed himself un¬ 
der complete obedience to the head. They accept 
the machine age, differing vigorously in this from 
Mr. Gandhi. They are consciously trying to meet 
the concrete economic needs of India as they see 
them by developing a form of training calculated to 
produce the right sort of citizens. All this they do, 
not with an uneasy parade of a religion of which they 
are more than half uncertain, but definitely out of a 
corporate religious consciousness. 

While, therefore, I should assert that the old In¬ 
dian religion has lost its religious grip on those classes 
which are most in touch with the modern world of 
ideas, and has shown little sign of such radical re¬ 
forming intelligence as would avail to turn the for¬ 
tunes of the day, we should be foolish to act on the 
assumption that the older religious culture no longer 
matters. The Christian movement is in great need of 
accurate and scholarly knowledge of what is going on 
within these religions today. 5 

What of Christianity in India ? The Christian 
approach to India is along many roads. Matters of 
Christian missionary policy are discussed later ; my 
purpose here is simply to refer to the things that most 

5 The Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies, Lahore, is among 
other things doing this admirably so far as Indian Islam is concerned. 


INDIA 


85 

impressed themselves upon me as I went about India 
early last year. But it is a never ceasing source of 
wonder to behold the multitude of modes of service 
and Christian expression that the resourceful spirit 
of Christian evangelism has brought into being. The 
village evangelist, the town pastor, the organizer in 
his office, the doctor, the nurse, the scientific research 
worker in the hospital, the village teacher, the ma¬ 
tron in the boarding school, the public schoolmaster, 
the college professor, the agricultural expert, the man 
who superintends cooperative societies, the worker 
among the factory hands, the man or woman in the 
city settlement, the writer, the theological teacher, 
the expert in pedagogy training village teachers, the 
“ rescue ” worker, the Christian sadhu, the bishop or 
chief pastor—what an array it is ! There are Indians 
and missionaries in all these callings, and more. 
These number only the special workers set apart for 
service, but the whole Christian approach to India, as 
to other lands, includes the men and women in every 
diversity of “ secular ” occupation who are trying 
in their separate spheres to practice a true Christian 
discipleship. 

It has often been said that the only possible policy 
for Christian education in India, as in other coun¬ 
tries where an increasing provision is made by the 
state and by private enterprise, is that it should aim 
at quality, and be content with a decreasing share in 
the total quantity of national education. More and 
more in India, as the church grows it will be found 
that the principal object of Christian education is to 
educate Christians. Yet there will be an opportunity 
for many years to come for Christian schools and 


86 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

colleges, in their different grades, to do some things 
so well that they give a lead to the country. 

In the education of girls and women the Christian 
forces still do work of the most outstanding quality. 
It is no longer the case that it is only or mainly Chris¬ 
tian girls who want education, or their parents for 
them ; all the great communities are changing in this 
respect, most notably in the Panjab, where there has 
been a rush to the schools on the part of Hindu, Sikh 
and Moslem girls. 

In methods of village primary education and in 
training teachers for it the best Christian institutions 
are the best in the country. The newer methods 
employed at such places as Moga are not followed 
widely enough even by Christian schools, but a glance 
at the visitors’ book shows to what an extent this place 
has become an educational Mecca to which not only 
Christian and missionary but government and other 
educators resort for inspiration. I doubt whether 
there is any department of Christian work in India 
that can show more both of religious alertness and 
technical efficiency than the best of the centers of 
rural teacher training. They are full of hope and 
suggestion for the future. One of the best instances 
of this resourcefulness that I have seen was in Bengal, 
where the students at Chapra preparing to be village 
teachers decided to try the method in their annual 
camp—hitherto an evangelistic effort on conventional 
lines and somewhat fruitless—of teaching crafts to the 
villagers among whom they went. The result was 
that normally inaccessible people not only welcomed 
this unexpected help but insisted on asking why such 
help was spontaneously rendered. “ Who pays you ? 
Why do you come ? ” The students found that their 


INDIA 


8 ? 

use of the crafts they were themselves learning 
brought them into intimate touch with the villagers, 
and gave them an opening that they had never had 
before to explain what the love of Christ meant to 
them. 6 

In no aspect of missionary work in India has there 
been more obvious advance in recent years than on 
the rural side. The idea of a coherent plan, in which 
church and school, hospital and credit bank all join 
with the home in the building of a Christian rural 
society, has been widely accepted. When it is re¬ 
membered how vital to India is the conquest of 
illiteracy, and how necessary it is for the fight against 
illiteracy to be waged as a part of a wider program 
of rural “ uplift,” it is plain that these rural Christian 
units that have arisen out of the experiments of re¬ 
cent years are going to play a very great part in the 
future. 

Another new development which seems to me to be 
of far-reaching importance is the closer linking of the 
Christian colleges with the community, especially the 
villages. The Lindsay commission on the Christian 
colleges suggested that what it styled “ extension 
and research ” should be an integral part of the life 
of every college. By this it meant a double process : 
on the one hand, bringing into the consciousness of 
the staffs, and through them of the students, the needs 
of the community, so that by the continuous en¬ 
deavor to face the questions that arise out of the com¬ 
munity life there should be an attack on the examina¬ 
tion-fetish and the deadening of spirit that goes with 
it; on the other, making available for the community 

6 See article by the Rev. Frank Ryrie in the International Review of 
Missions for July, 1936. 


88 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

—the village teachers and pastors, for instance— 
something of the knowledge that is the possession of 
a center of Christian learning. 7 Put thus, the plan 
may sound very abstract. But if it is considered in 
relation to the great movement of the depressed 
classes towards the church, of which I shall have more 
to say in this chapter, I think it becomes luminously 
clear. If there is going to be an even greater growth 
of the village churches in the next five years than any 
period in the last century has known, all sorts of ques¬ 
tions will have to be faced that will tax to the utmost 
the brains and ability of the whole church. Prob¬ 
lems of education, of church development, of the 
relation between the functional organization of a 
Hindu community, with its caste groupings, and the 
Christian society—these and many more will have to 
be faced. The more closely the Christian colleges 
can be linked with the church in facing these issues, 
the better. It is not necessary that such liaison work 
should have only the Christian community in view, 
though it is right that the colleges should use first 
the natural links they have with the Indian church. 
Christians in the villages are a part of the total social 
organism, and it would be alien to the genius of the 
Christian religion to seek to promote a Christian com¬ 
munal spirit. An excellent instance of the touch of 
college on community was shown me in the Panjab 
by Mr. Heinrich, who is working in a Panjab village 
in connection with the Forman Christian College, 
Lahore. Of all the interesting and stimulating things 
I learned from him none was more suggestive than 

1 Report of Commission on Christian Higher Education in India, 
p. 159 ff- 


INDIA 


89 

his story of the cup he has persuaded someone to offer 
for the cleanest village in the district. It was usually 
won, at first, by the Christian village where Mr. Hein¬ 
rich works, but there was great joy this year when for 
the first time a Moslem village got the cup. A rivalry 
of this sort is the best possible antidote to the com¬ 
munal virus. 

I have begun what I have to say of the Christian 
movement in India with these matters, for although 
by far the most notable thing in India from the Chris¬ 
tian point of view is the turning of whole communi¬ 
ties to Christ, it would be wrong to consider that 
apart from any insight into the most living and de¬ 
veloping factors in the Christian church as it now is. 
Let us now look at the evangelistic opportunity. 

Next only to the movement among the depressed 
classes I should place in significance the marked en¬ 
hancement of the evangelistic spirit within the In¬ 
dian church. It is very easy for people in the West 
who look out upon India or China from a great dis¬ 
tance to take an utterly unreal view of the indigenous 
churches. It is habitually assumed that churches in 
the “ mission field ” will manifest continually a level 
of devotion, sacrificial giving and evangelistic power 
that is virtually unknown in the Christian West. The 
Indian Christians, especially the more educated 
among them, are in touch with the tendencies of 
thought and life in the modern world. The same 
things that diminish evangelistic power in Western 
communions affect them ; they face the same prob¬ 
lems, wrestle with the same doubts. They get their 
problems a little later, and they have on the whole 
less experienced help in dealing with them—no one 


go CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

who has not been a missionary really knows what 
understaffing means—but they are in the same world. 
A good many of the best men I have known in India 
have faced just the same doubts as the rest of us. In 
what does the unique element in the gospel consist ? 
Is the inspiration of the Scriptures, critically consid¬ 
ered, something different from that of the Bhagavad 
Gita, and if so, wherein exactly lies the difference ? 
Other questions arise also of a more Indian prove¬ 
nance. With a largely illiterate church—the percent¬ 
age of literacy is about 28—is it really good that these 
masses of outcastes should be brought in ? Even as 
things are, the rate of literacy in the church is declin¬ 
ing because of them. Is it fair—this doubt affects 
especially those of nationalist temper—to Mr. 
Gandhi and the better Hinduism to take in numbers 
of depressed class converts when efforts are being 
made to alter the Hindu attitude ? Is the church 
really vital to the gospel, or is it something Western, 
not necessarily to be taken over into India which 
has her own adoration of the Christ? I could say 
much more of all this, but this may indicate the 
kind of problems that arise, and, I would add, 
must inevitably arise if Christians are alive and 
think. 

Having noted these things I can say with all the 
more force that the leadership in the present evange¬ 
listic movement is emphatically Indian. The Na¬ 
tional Christian Council, representing virtually all 
the missions and churches in India except those of 
Rome, has launched a five years’ movement of evan¬ 
gelism, and it is most impressive to see how earnestly 
it is being taken up by pastors and clergy and lay 


INDIA 



leaders everywhere. I obtained ample proof of this 
as I went about. There is an atmosphere of convic- ^ 
tion and of being possessed by a message. I felt it 
most when at Nagpur I met with a group of Indian 
clergy and ministers who had come together to talk 
over the interests of their work. They were not, with 
one or two exceptions, outstanding men, but all were 
responsible leaders such as represent the life of the 
church better than those of quite unusual gifts. I 
think that anyone who could have listened to those 
conversations would have felt extraordinarily encour¬ 
aged about the future of the church in India. I have 
just been looking through my notes of what they said. 
They were in every case conscious that there lay be¬ 
fore them an opportunity greater than they had ever 
known. This consciousness was expressed quite as 
strongly by men who came from such centers as 
Benares where difficulties are almost overwhelming 
as by those who were already grappling with the mass 
movement of the untouchables. A city pastor from 
the north gave an account of how the members of his 
church had carried out the week of witness, which in 
all parts of India has been a constituent part of the 
new evangelistic forward movement. A man from 
the central provinces was on fire with what he and 
others had found in the endeavor to apply the prin¬ 
ciples of Dr. Pickett’s mass movement study to that 
area : whole communities were found ready and anx¬ 
ious to be taught and received. Another told how 
the Madras churches had raised from their own re¬ 
sources money to send him as a missioner into the 
congregations of the farther south. Another told us 
how he had been in friendly touch with the Arya 


92 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Samajists—probably the most definitely and mili- 
tantly anti-Christian group in the whole of Hindu 
society—and had actually been invited to address a 
meeting of ten thousand of their members. One got 
the impression of men who were not trying to 
heighten effects by exaggeration, or were blind to the 
immense difficulties by which they were faced, but 
who were sure of their message and felt themselves to 
be in the service of a triumphant Lord. 

My own impressions, for what they are worth, co¬ 
incide entirely with what these men had to tell. I 
noticed that in some of the most difficult areas of 
north India, where the church has always been very 
small relative to the great populations, there were 
indications of a movement. The kind of man who 
has always been willing to discuss and inquire was 
now facing decision, and often making it. 

This is the true setting in which to see the turning 
of the depressed classes. This, again, is not a new 
thing. At least 80 per cent of the Christians in India 
of the non-Roman communions (it is possible that 
the same is true of the Roman Church) have come 
directly or at one or two removes from the untouch¬ 
ables or depressed classes. In the Panjab the Chris¬ 
tian population has increased tenfold in thirty years. 
In the Dornakal diocese in the Telugu country, 
when Bishop Azariah first went there in 1919, there 
were 86,000 Christians ; at the end of 1935 there were 
over 200,000, of whom 11,000 had been baptized dur¬ 
ing the year. It is estimated that in the last two years 
over 112,000 persons have been baptized through the 
labors of the seven principal missions in the Telugu 
country. Bishop Azariah has 40,000 people who are 


INDIA 


93 


ready and willing to be taught, but he cannot supply 
teachers. 

Most significant of all, the community movement 
has now become in the Telugu country not only a 
movement of untouchables—Malas and Madigas, 
themselves deeply divided by communal feeling— 
but a movement among the caste people. It is esti¬ 
mated that about 60,000 people of the Sudra castes 
(below the Brahmans and above the untouchables— 
the middle castes of rural Hinduism) have become 
Christians in that region. I asked a group of Indian 
clergy, rural deans in the diocese of Dornakal, what 
in their experience it was that brought the Sudras to 
Christ. They all answered in the same language as 
others had used : “ They have seen the change in 
the depressed class Christians/’ Nowhere can one 
better see the church alive and witnessing, itself by 
its life carrying the evangel. 

Into this India and this kind of Christian prepara¬ 
tion come now the restless millions of untouchables. 
I have already said that the motives with which they 
look away from Hinduism to other faiths are mixed, 
and it is inevitable in the nature of the case that they 
should be mixed. Can anyone conceive a great 
movement making itself felt among millions of back¬ 
ward illiterate folk, who have seen a glimpse of free¬ 
dom and a better human standing in the world, 
without embracing a mixture of motives ? Let it be 
fully recognized that we have not before us a reli¬ 
gious movement of spiritual awakening and longing 
for Christ, so much as a deep restlessness and a deter¬ 
mination to find the way to freedom. But the leaders 
of the untouchables are well aware that without the 


94 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

strength of religion the goals they desire must forever 
be unattainable by their people. What folly to talk 
of detaching the untouchables from Hinduism, if 
that were to be all! 

I suppose that the turning, not only away from 
Hinduism, but toward Christianity, has gone furthest 
with the Ezhavas in Travancore and the Malayalam- 
speaking region. At a little conference of leaders of 
four churches with whom I met at Alwaye, one In¬ 
dian clergyman told of a meeting between some 
Ezhava leaders and some Christians, at which the 
Ezhavas put forward four points as matters on which 
they were convinced : “We are disgusted with Hin¬ 
duism. We admire what we know of the teaching 
and character of Jesus Christ. We admire the lives 
of the missionaries we have met. We admire the 
philanthropic work, such as schools and hospitals, 
carried on by the missions and we think that all these 
things are good for our people.” 

The latest news that I have seen from Travancore 
suggests that the Ezhavas are not going the length 
immediately of offering en masse to become Chris¬ 
tian—of which there was some fear after their votes 
in community meetings. They are determined to 
leave Hinduism ; the next steps they leave to be set¬ 
tled later. The same thing was true in the confer¬ 
ence of untouchables held in May at Lucknow. It 
is infinitely better that it should be so, for there is 
then a spirit of inquiry and expectancy aroused and 
it is possible for the ordinary activities of the Chris¬ 
tian church, reinforced, let us hope, and made fully 
coherent and united, to be brought to bear all over 
India on this moving and seeking people. 8 

8 On all this see The Untouchables' Quest, by G. E. Phillips. 


INDIA 


95 


When in a later chapter we come to discuss some of 
the problems of upbuilding the church throughout 
the world we shall return to the needs that this great 
movement lays upon us all. I want to end this ac¬ 
count of things seen in India—an account full of 
contradictions—by recording my own deep sense of 
the relentless opposition which will be offered by 
Hinduism to the great Christian ingathering which 
may be upon us. Let no one imagine that the toler¬ 
ance of Hinduism, its amorphous character theologi¬ 
cally considered, its ability to admire all religious 
types and to include them if they will, spells a toler¬ 
ance of evangelism which has as its end baptism and 
the integrated life of the Christian church. Of this 
Mr. Gandhi is himself the best possible example, for 
he has drunk deeply of Christian inspiration while 
remaining intensely Hindu. Mr. Gandhi is always 
polite, but he can hardly speak with kindness of the 
Christian work for the outcastes in medical and edu¬ 
cational succor and social betterment, because the 
Christians persist in offering also the Christian reli¬ 
gion. For him it means using a bait to proselytize ; 
for us it is the sheer duty to give not only learning 
and health and solvency—good things but none of 
them absolutes—but the knowledge of God’s love in 
Christ. 

In this Mr. Gandhi will prove typical of Hindu¬ 
ism, and it is well that we should recognize it. A 
significant incident occurred lately in the United 
Provinces’ legislative council. In conference with 
the Indian Christian leaders the minister of educa¬ 
tion had admitted that it was reasonable that special 
educational grants made to the depressed classes 
should not be withheld from Christians of those 


96 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

groups whose economic condition still united them 
with those from whom they had come. The grants 
were based on economic condition, not on commu¬ 
nity, so that this view was obviously just. In the 
council, however, a storm arose, and the minister 
was compelled to accept a motion removing the 
grant, on the ground that it was a subsidy to prose- 
lytism. 

There is a jealous conscience among Indian Chris¬ 
tian leaders on this matter of proselytism, and mis¬ 
sionaries need no urging to abstain from the 
appearance of unworthy solicitation and use of ma¬ 
terial gain as a stimulant. No one who really knows 
anything at first hand ever repeats these stories ; if 
there were nothing else to say, at least it is plain that 
the missions are too badly hit financially to be able 
to bribe the population of India ! But my point is 
this, that even if every unfair method is avoided, 
there is no acceptance by Hinduism of the funda¬ 
mental right of conversion. The same tolerance that 
leads the inquirer to admire easily and to say medi¬ 
tatively, “ Yes, all religions teach the same,” comes 
round full circle with a great hatred of that religion 
which in the name of its Lord and Master must be 
exclusive and must demand total surrender, and can¬ 
not claim less for him than that he is Lord of all and 
that in him are all things fulfilled. Here, in this 
assertion of the unshared lordship of the Lord, is the 
skandalon, the stumbling block in India. If we did 
not experience that opposition, we ought indeed to 
fear. 


IV 


THE NEAR EAST 

T O PASS directly from the crowded Indian scene 
with its immense hopes and problems to the to¬ 
tally different countries of the Near East is to pass 
from one world to another. My boat took me from 
Bombay to Suez ; it was full of India, and my mind 
was full of India too. From Suez to Cairo by train, 
and then a world utterly different from that which I 
had left—no mass movements, no Hinduism, the all- 
pervading fact of Islam, but nationalism still, and the 
rationalist skeptical tone of modern civilization. 

My stay in Egypt and Palestine was entirely taken 
up with two meetings which, very fortunately, en¬ 
abled me to make contact with a considerable num¬ 
ber of people from different parts of the Near East— 
Egypt, Turkey, Iran (formerly but now no more 
called Persia), Iraq, Syria and Palestine. One was 
the annual meeting of the Egypt Inter-Mission Coun¬ 
cil ; the other that of the executive committee of the 
Near East Christian Council, a body that unites in 
voluntary cooperation many of the Christian organi¬ 
zations at work in the great area between Iran and 
Morocco, Rumania and the southern Sudan. This 
region of the earth has never been united as a whole 
since the Roman Empire, which comprised it all ex¬ 
cept the far-distant Parthia; it is divided today 
among an extraordinary variety of governments— 
97 


98 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

national sovereignties, mandates, protectorates and 
the conditioned independence of Egypt. But it has 
in common the great fact of Islam, and also, though 
less evidently, the memory of ancient conflicts in the 
days when Christendom and Islam represented rival 
civilizations that waged a secular warfare. Of those 
older days the ancient Christian churches are a re¬ 
minder in almost all of these lands—Egypt, Palestine, 
Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran ; but not in northern 
Africa, from which the church of Augustine and 
Tertullian has disappeared as completely as Car¬ 
thage. 

I think that the cause of Christian evangelization 
is confronted with greater obstacles in this area than 
in any other in the world—I do not, of course, in¬ 
clude in this statement “ closed ” lands such as Tibet 
proper and Afghanistan, but the countries in which, 
as in much of the Near East, organized missionary 
activity has been carried on for two or three genera¬ 
tions. These difficulties are all attributable to two 
causes—the existence of the conception of the Mos¬ 
lem church-state, with the conception of personal law 
that flows from it, and the strength of nationalism. 
But these two causes are opposed to one another in 
principle, and it is the war between them that makes 
the Near East so fascinating a subject of study. It is 
possible to discern in the events of common life and 
political development a continuous struggle between 
two conceptions of human society that have totally 
different origins and are in essence completely op¬ 
posed. 

To understand the Moslem church-state we have 
to go rather further back than most of the argument 


THE NEAR EAST 


99 


of this book has taken us . 1 The state which the 
prophet Mohammed had in mind and which did 
actually exist under his immediate successors can be 
justly termed a “ church-state.” It consisted of 
church members and those only, and they viewed the 
existence and activities of their state theologically. 
It embraced those Arabs who had accepted Islam and 
had thus separated themselves into a community 
apart from other Arabs and from the rest of the 
world. All previous family ties, enmities, feuds, con¬ 
federations were blotted out; the new Moslem must 
accept as a brother in the faith all other Moslems ; 
the multitudinous feuds of the Arab tribes were now 
merged in one great feud of the Moslem Arabs 
against the non-Moslem Arabs, the Jihad . This holy 
war, or better holy feud, springs directly from the old 
Arab relationship of tribal feud and is the permanent 
relationship between the Moslem community and all 
communities that have not accepted Islam. This 
relationship was transferred from Arabia to the wider 
world. Arabia had become one and Moslem, and 
had then poured out into that wider world in the 
great Arab conquests. Even after the rush of that on¬ 
set had been stayed it was still recognized as the duty 
of the caliph of the time (the word caliph means 
“ successor,” i.e., the successor of the prophet) to 
lead an expedition at least once a year against the 
surrounding non-Moslem states. Later on, when By¬ 
zantium held out, and the Pyrenees in the west de¬ 
fined the bounds beyond which in Europe Islam 

1 In the succeeding pages I have relied mainly upon an unpublished 
paper of the great Christian authority in Islamic studies, D. B. 
Macdonald. 


100 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

should not pass, the relations of Christendom and 
Islam became more settled ; but the obligation of the 
permanent situation was always recognized. 

The difference between Moslem and non-Moslem 
was, therefore, the basis of constitutional govern¬ 
ment. To a Moslem professor of canon law the dis¬ 
tinction between state and church would be meaning¬ 
less. The Moslem state originated in prophetic 
theocracy—that is to say, it was founded by someone 
who believed himself to be laying down the founda¬ 
tions of the state under the immediate direction of 
God. The administration of the state is in theory 
democratic, but this means only that the Moslem 
people administers a divine system. The constitu¬ 
tion and the laws are of divine origin, and in the 
strict sense there can never be for Moslems any hu¬ 
man legislation. The Moslem people determines by 
its agreement what the divinely given constitution 
and laws are, and it applies them by its right of ad¬ 
ministration. Thus the people must, by the very 
nature of the case, be all Moslems. There is, strictly 
speaking, no clergy in Islam, so that one line of de¬ 
velopment into a distinction between church and 
state is barred. Some Moslems are better educated 
than others and therefore have a better right to 
judge, determine and interpret what the divine law 
and usage are, but there is no further distinction. 

The participation of non-Moslems as full citizens 
in the administration of the state and any new legis¬ 
lation are therefore equally impossible. This has 
been always the orthodox theory, and the accommo¬ 
dations of this theory to the practical necessities in 
which Moslem governments found themselves situ- 


THE NEAR EAST 


101 


ated have never ranked as anything more than re¬ 
grettable concessions to necessity in a world not yet 
Moslem. As soon as Islam spread beyond Arabia the 
Moslem governments were faced by immovable facts. 
Great masses of population were absorbed, non- 
Moslem in ideas and usages ; the relative unity of the 
Arabian peninsula was left behind for a medley of 
civilizations, some highly developed. The popula¬ 
tions of the different countries over which Moslem 
governments ruled either were Moslem or they were 
not; if they were not, they were either native to the 
newly Moslemized territory or they were foreign 
colonies settled in these lands for the purpose of 
trade. These last the Moslems inherited from the 
Byzantine government and treated in just the same 
way as the Byzantines had done. The system was 
that which, when developed later, came to be known 
as the capitulations ; it meant a waiving of sover¬ 
eignty for the purpose of convenience and to avoid 
the trouble of administering alien populations. The 
Byzantines also showed the way to deal with the na¬ 
tive populations which did not become Moslem. 
They had allowed to them large powers of autonomy. 
This admirably suited the Moslems, who did not de¬ 
sire the trouble of administering great numbers of 
non-Moslems, and must in deference to their own 
principles leave them outside the ring-fence of Islam. 
As they were not Moslems they could not be citizens, 
but were only wards of the Moslem state, with certain 
fixed duties toward it in return for a certain protec¬ 
tion from it. Their own domestic affairs they could 
manage according to their own codes, and the head of 
each community—rabbi, patriarch or chief bishop— 


102 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

was their only link with the Moslem state. The sys¬ 
tem was never more than a practical accommodation 
to necessity ; it had no theoretical basis and was alien 
to Moslem fundamental ideas, but it worked fairly 
well. In practice it resulted in a series of little states 
within the state, none with the rights of the Moslem 
but tolerated and protected and with a definite status. 
In recent times the capitulations have had a certain 
influence on the status of these communities and 
have brought them under a sort of treaty protection. 

The part of these alien populations that did em¬ 
brace Islam had a much deeper effect upon the Mos¬ 
lem state. They formed the bulk of the Moslem 
populations, and they had their own social usages and 
ideas. These came to play an ever greater part in the 
life of the state. Two codes of law gradually ap¬ 
peared : one, the divine code of the theologians and 
canonists, the revelation of Allah through the Koran 
and the traditions, developed and codified by human 
reason and assured by the agreement of the Moslem 
people ; the other, an admittedly human code based 
on local customs and necessity, not in Arab lands (of 
whose customs the first code was a mirror), but in 
other countries, and backed by the will of rulers and 
governments. Between these two codes or provinces 
of law the boundary is always the same. The canon 
law rules the personal religious life and duties of the 
individual and his family life—marriage, divorce, the 
custody of children, inheritance; the local codes 
rule everything else—civil, criminal and commercial 
law. 

It has been a practical division, but it has never 
been accepted by the theologians, and they have had 


THE NEAR EAST IO 3 

the support of masses of believing Moslems. It has 
been a queer but important alliance between the 
masses and the theologians against the practical ad¬ 
ministrators and, in these days, the educated classes. 
Hence the intermittent risings and insurrections ; 
hence the unwillingness of Moslem administrators to 
take action which may perfectly commend itself to 
their rational judgment but which they know may 
rouse the masses against them. Hence, too, the fact 
that while the Moslem governments used, and were 
compelled to use, the services of Christian and other 
non-Moslem officers in the highest posts of their 
administrations, they dared not ignore the mob, and 
the Christian official would be foolish if he or his 
people presumed upon the favor shown them. 

There were, then, these three elements always 
present: the position of the canonists, impregnably 
entrenched in the divine revelation; the practical 
administrative situations which governing Moslems 
had to face ; and the masses of the people with their 
own ideas. Points of friction easily arose when three 
such elements were present. “ Islam in danger ” is 
always a ready cry, and Islam combines two great 
human interests, patriotism and religion, making 
them one. 

It is not difficult to see why in every country in 
which Moslem canon law is still the law of personal 
status Christian missions have been faced by the 
greatest possible difficulties. Conversion was apostasy, 
and that was punished by death in the case of men ; 
in the case of women a virtually compulsory marriage 
was arranged, and it was laid down that in answer to 
the proposal made, either laughter or tears or silence 


104 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

was to be taken as consent. (Needless to say, the con¬ 
version or apostasy of married women was not even 
conceived.) These provisions were of course abro¬ 
gated, at least so far as the death penalty went, in 
countries such as Egypt in which an overriding non- 
Moslem influence existed in government. In the 
same way thieves had not their hands cut off, nor 
were adulterers stoned. But whereas provision was 
always made, and naturally so, for the registration 
and due recognition of converts to Islam, none was 
made or could be made for conversion from Islam. 
Moreover, the canon law laid down that a Moslem 
cannot inherit from a non-Moslem or vice versa ; a 
convert from Islam is de facto divorced from his Mos¬ 
lem wife and cannot make a legal will. These condi¬ 
tions mean two things : first, that the work of 
evangelism is attended by the most crushing difficul¬ 
ties and that conversion is not merely very unpopular 
but outside the legal framework of the life of the 
people ; second, that the Christian minority, whether 
of converts or of an ancient church, is at a legal dis¬ 
advantage. 

I have thought it worth while to set down at length 
this Islamic background of principle, for, as we shall 
see, it is no mere matter of archeological research but 
the statement of doctrines and influences which are 
very powerful in Moslem states today. We turn now 
to look at the other great influence which is at war 
with this idea of the church-state. We are prepared 
for it by what has been said of the accommodation of 
strict principle to the actual situations in the different 
Moslem countries. This is the principle or spirit of 
nationalism. 


THE NEAR EAST 


105 


We will begin with Turkey. Here is the champion 
of the nationalist idea among all the Moslem coun¬ 
tries. It is ironical for one who lived in India during 
the height of the caliphate controversy to reflect how 
we were told then that it was a religious necessity of 
Islam that temporal and spiritual power should be 
united ; that Islam knew nothing of the devitalizing 
distinction between church and state ; and that the 
integrity of the whole of Turkey’s possessions, as the 
home of Islam, was a religious obligation. The 
Turks, led by Kemal, have driven out the caliph and 
there is now no commander of the faithful. But they 
have gone far beyond that. It is hardly too much to 
say that today Turkey is not a Moslem state in any 
official sense. She is a secular state in which the bulk 
of the inhabitants are still in some sense Moslems. 
The sacred law (Sharia) was abolished, and in its 
place the Swiss civil code set up. The fez was abol¬ 
ished, though its lack of brim was necessary if good 
Moslems were to wear their hats at prayer and cause 
their foreheads to touch the ground. The veil was 
abolished. The Arabic script vanished and the new 
Turkish-Roman took its place. Persian and Arabic 
Scriptures disappeared from the schools ; modern 
European languages were cultivated. The clause 
which laid it down that “ Islam is the religion of 
the Turkish state ” was taken out of the constitution. 

Most of this took place fairly soon after the revolu¬ 
tion in which the victorious Kemal, fresh from driv¬ 
ing the Greeks into the sea, showed himself truly the 
expression of the mind of his Turkish folk. More 
recent events include the turning of Santa Sophia 
into a museum, and the prohibition of clerical dress 


106 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

to all except the actual head of each religious com¬ 
munity. This hits the moulvis hard, but it also hits 
hard every other kind of clergyman. Women are 
now enfranchised, and last year seventeen women 
were elected to the Grand National Assembly. 

Modern Turkey is organized round the idea of 
race, and of nationality based upon race. It is most 
significant in this connection to observe that every 
attempt is being made, especially through the schools, 
to popularize the idea that the Islamic period of 
Turkish history is only an episode in the history of 
the people, and that much importance therefore be¬ 
longs to the pre-Islamic period of the people’s life. 
I do not know how much significance is to be attrib¬ 
uted to the white wolf on the paper money in Turkey 
—no more, perhaps, than to Britannia and her trident 
with us in Britain—but I remember seeing in some 
journal the statement that during the World War 
Enver Pasha circulated to the troops a prayer to the 
white wolf, who was a tutelary deity of the Turks 
on the plains of central Asia. At least the creature 
suggests an emphasis on the racial history of Turkey 
to the exclusion of the religious. 

The attitude of this reborn Turkish nation—and 
we must remember the tremendous debt under which 
Kemal Ataturk has laid his people in rescuing them 
from the mire of defeat and raising them again to 
power and unity—toward foreign nations is full of 
interest. They are to be studied and, where desir¬ 
able, imitated, but the slightest suspicion of foreign 
propaganda or attempted domination is the sign for 
immediate repression. In education there is no 
doubt whatever that Turkey has set her face toward 


THE NEAR EAST 107 

the West, and that she is determined to be finished 
with the old predominantly religious Arab-Persian 
culture. Today it is France and, even more than 
France, Germany, Britain and America that afford 
the models in education. I was told some years ago 
of children’s copybooks in which the legends appear 
for copperplate transcription, “ A Turk uses a fork,” 
“ A Turk does not eat with his fingers ”—very clear 
suggestion of a desire to turn the current of popular 
manners toward the West rather than the East. But 
along with this spirit went a resolute determination 
to banish the slightest trace of foreign authority. 
The move to Angora, with the abandonment of Con¬ 
stantinople (Istanbul) as the capital—though there 
never was a city so obviously destined to be a great 
capital as Constantinople—was dictated by the resolve 
to have no more of that overweening foreign diplo¬ 
macy of which the great city was the symbol. Angora, 
correspondingly, was the symbol of the free Turkish 
life of the Anatolian uplands. Again, the ruler 
would somehow manage without foreign loans, for 
loans would mean a measure of foreign control; with 
enormous difficulty he achieved it, and the produc¬ 
tion of coal in Turkey (to take only one instance of 
economic development) reached approximately two 
million tons in 1935. 

How does this secularized nationalist Turkey look 
upon Christian missions ? Here again the answer 
depends on factors that are now in the past. Chris¬ 
tianity to the Turks has meant, in the main, Ar¬ 
menian and Greek. I have already described the 
system of “ states within the state ” by which the sul¬ 
tan’s government managed the alien groups. This 


108 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

alone suggested that religion and race-nationality go 
together, and the whole life of the Near East con¬ 
firmed the idea. Added to this is the fact that the 
Turkish government had always regarded the Chris¬ 
tian minorities not merely as the object of solicitude 
by foreign Christian powers but as the spearheads of 
possible intrigue by those powers. 

So much for reaction from the past. But the posi¬ 
tive racialism of the present is inevitably, though not 
perhaps directly, hostile to Christianity. Here we 
come once more to the totalitarian state and the 
group of ideas associated with it. It is, I think, clear 
that Turkey is not interested in Islamic orthodoxy. 
The sacred Moslem law has gone, and legal ideas of 
freedom are now taken from the Swiss code and no 
longer from seventh century Arabia. That ought to 
mean that there is perfect freedom for conversion. In 
theory there is, and it is said that instances have been 
found of individuals or small groups confessing 
Christ and being defended in their right to do so, 
against popular local resentment, by official action. 
But in the main the official desire to banish every 
kind of foreign propaganda, coupled with the keen 
determination to instill into the popular mind, and 
especially into the young, a racial-national gospel, 
presses very hard upon Christian work. It must be 
frankly faced that Christianity is at a low ebb in 
Turkey. It is doubted whether there have ever been 
so few Christians there for eighteen centuries. The 
exchange of populations with the Greeks left only a 
few Greek and Armenian Christians in Istanbul and 
virtually none in Anatolia ; conversion, as we have 


THE NEAR EAST log 

seen, though legally possible is so difficult and un¬ 
popular as to be nearly impossible. 

Non-Christian pupils may not attend Christian 
worship or teaching in Christian schools, even if they 
desire to do so. Even the most indirect kind of in¬ 
fluence is frowned upon, and the foreign schools are 
attacked in the press as centers of foreign culture, de¬ 
nationalizing in their influence. Recently a new 
property tax has been imposed upon schools which 
were formerly exempt; it is possible that the tax may 
be retroactive, an event which would crush 
the foreign schools completely. Publishing is also 
suspect: a Turkish translation of Fosdick’s The 
Manhood of the Master was recently confiscated. 

The restrictions on “ propaganda ” are not specifi¬ 
cally anti-Christian ; they apply equally to Moslem 
propaganda, like the restrictions on clerical dress 
and headgear. What matters in the modern Turkey 
is Turkishness, the Turkish spirit, belief in the 
Turkish destiny. If Islam breathes of the old anti- 
scientific priest-ridden world, Christianity savors of 
the imperialism of the Western powers. Neither is 
adequately Turkish. 

In this situation of extreme difficulty the Christian 
missions can do little but wait and pray. It is plain 
that institutional work will be virtually forbidden to 
them. They recognize that they have to convince the 
Turks that they have nothing but good will toward 
them, and that whether or not it was true in the past, 
as the Turks think, that Christianity was tied up 
with anti-Turkishness, it is not so now. Some lead¬ 
ing Turks have begun to realize this. I was told some 


110 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

time ago by a friend in Turkey that an official had 
said to him, “ We do not mind your being Protestants 
so long as you are not Christians ” 1 2 There are 
groups of young men even in Angora who claim 
Jesus Christ as their master. Stories are told of re¬ 
markable private gatherings in which Christian dis- 
cipleship is the inspiring note, but they are not being 
brought together, and there is a certain fear of resort¬ 
ing to missionaries. It may be that if such Christians 
as remain in Turkey can show the needed depth and 
reality in Christian life, there may yet be an awaken¬ 
ing of personal religion and a turning to Christ 
among Turks. But the days are dark, and we cannot 
forget that a militant race-conscious nationalism is no 
better matrix for Christian love than the Koranic 
orthodoxy of the old days. 

Now let us turn to Iran. This country has tended 
in recent years to follow some distance after Turkey 
but in the same direction. Here, as in Turkey, the 
tide of nationalism runs strongly. Here also is the 
desire to have done with all that belongs to the 
picturesque and feeble past, the time when the West¬ 
erner looked on the Easterner as a funny person in a 
picture book. The hat is changed—hats are an in¬ 
fallible guide to national politics in the Near East— 
and in place of the old pahlevi cap has come the 
European hat. The new clothing confers equality on. 

2 1 ought, perhaps, to explain this remark. “Christian” meant 
Greek or Armenian, or French Catholic. The “Protestants” were 
Americans, and not regarded in the same light as the emissaries of 
other nations with different secular relations with Turkey. But I 
do not wish to be unfair to the Orthodox and Catholics and have 
no doubt that the disability of being linked with secular diplomacy 
is equally obvious and regrettable to them. 


THE NEAR EAST 


111 


all—Iranians, Parsees, Jews, Armenians—; there is 
no stigma suggested by what a man wears. The un¬ 
veiling of women has been carried out to completion 
with relentless severity* The orders came first to girls 
in government elementary schools, and to their teach¬ 
ers. Then came women inspectors, then girls in 
private schools. The queen and her daughters drove 
unveiled through the streets in European dress. 
Great pressure was brought to bear upon the wives of 
officials. It was threatened that private schools would 
be closed unless all the girls unveiled. Veiled women 
were forbidden to appear in the streets or the cafes, 
shopkeepers were forbidden to serve them, and 
finally, the police were empowered to remove the 
veil from women found veiled in public. These 
methods are worth noting as indicative of the spirit 
that informs a determined nationalism which knows 
what it wants to achieve. It is thought that the total 
effect may be good, inasmuch as polygamy, already 
attacked by “ advanced ” Iranians, is sure to suffer 
under the new unveiled regime, but there is much 
sympathy with the older women. Child marriage 
is already illegal, and the minimum age for a girl to 
marry is sixteen. 

Economic changes have been great. Railways will 
unite Teheran with the Caspian sea and the Persian 
(must one say Iranian ?) gulf. Nearly thirteen thou¬ 
sand miles of motor roads have been completed. 
Iran, like Iraq, has done well in financial negotiation 
with the West and came off successfully in a legal 
contest with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. There 
are sugar factories, spinning mills, cement works, 
fruit-canning industries, woolen mills and leather fac- 


112 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tories. Probably at least a thousand Iranian students 
are studying abroad. 

There is a growing spirit of criticism of the older 
Islamic ways of thought and life. As in Turkey, 
much emphasis is placed on the pre-Islamic history 
of Iran, and the name of the present dynasty (Pahlavi 
or Parthian) is an index of what is going on. Arche¬ 
ological research is now having a new effect in creat¬ 
ing a fresh interest in the reality of the past. The 
critical study of the Koran and the Traditions has be¬ 
gun. The old Moslem law (Sharia) has been almost 
set aside, though not formally so as in Turkey. 
Cases are now determined in the courts according to 
new codes based on acts of parliament and on direct 
legislation, without regard to the traditions that have 
come from the prophet or the imams. (Iran has al¬ 
ways been a Shiah country accepting the imams and 
not the caliphate.) 

The income from religious endowments is being 
employed by the government for purposes of public 
welfare. Numerous theological schools were for¬ 
merly subsidized by these endowments, but these 
have now been reduced in number and so changed 
in character that the students, in addition to accept¬ 
ing a fresh curriculum including studies in science 
and history, must wear ordinary clothes and submit 
to gymnastic drill like students in other schools. 
“ An act of parliament was cited in a recent book un¬ 
der the heading : ‘ Putting out of business unedu¬ 
cated and corrupt theological students who were 
sycophants and rascals.’ ” 3 A sarcastic reflection on 

3 See article “Intellectual Awakening in Modern Iran,” by Dr. 
D. M. Donaldson in the International Review of Missions, April, 
1936, from which I have drawn in this account of changes in Iran. 


THE NEAR EAST 


1*3 

the uselessness of the old type of learning and attitude 
to life is given in an article in a daily paper: 
“ Whenever civilization, inventions and discoveries 
are discussed, we are sure to hear that God has given 
this world to the foreigners and the other world to 
us. . . . We have so many superstitious ideas that 
we can’t move. No matter what happens to us we 
say * God is great.’ So we sit and hope that one day 
nature will have pity on us. Other people look on 
the world from a different angle. They work hard, 
learn science, and without regarding the angels or 
devils they do things and make themselves com¬ 
fortable. We are lost. They have both worlds while 
we have neither.” 

In this new Iran the Christian church finds great 
difficulties set in its way by the keenness of the na¬ 
tional spirit, but it is full of courage and hope, for it 
is convinced that the new spirit of the people enables 
them to look more fairly than in the past on the 
Christian teaching. It is in Iran, alone in the Near 
East, that a church has been built, albeit small, com¬ 
posed mainly of converts from Islam. (There is no¬ 
where in the Near East anything parallel to the 
situation in east Java where there is a church of thirty 
thousand people, all of whom have come out of 
Islam.) There are many public confessions of faith, 
and it is believed that there is a widespread desire 
below the surface for Christian confession. The 
characteristics of the new Moslem converts to the 
Christian faith are joy and gladness and the desire 
to tell their friends what has been done for them. 

The choice for many of the keenest spirits seems to 
lie between the abandonment of all religion and the 


114 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

acceptance of Christianity. It seems to have been 
possible in Iran, more than in certain other Near 
East countries, to overcome the suspicion that Chris¬ 
tianity is necessarily antinational, and there is no 
doubt of the truly Iranian feeling of the Christians, 
who believe themselves to be truly Iranian and truly 
Christian, even though they may have Moslem names. 
There is therefore much hope among the Christians 
in Iran. 

But this is only one side. There has been con¬ 
tinual persecution of missionary schools, sometimes 
apparently only in the fulfillment of state laws that 
were aimed at foreign influence especially from Rus¬ 
sia, sometimes, it would appear, when an Islamic 
orthodox influence got into control in official quar¬ 
ters. Missions in Iran live dangerously, with great 
hope and joy and also with the recognition that a 
keenly nationalist government, incalculable as all 
such governments are, might turn them out of Iran 
tomorrow. But there is a church to continue the 
work. 

From Turkey and Iran, in which the nationalist 
spirit has on the whole conquered the religiously 
orthodox, we turn to Egypt, where the situation is 
very different. Nationalism is a great force in Egypt, 
but it has run along Islamic channels and there is 
little antireligious nationalism. The iconoclasm of 
Turkey has been to Egypt not a beacon to follow but 
a red light of danger to avoid. She believes that 
while through all the Moslem centuries Cairo and the 
Azhar university made Egypt the center of the world 
of Islam, now more than ever, when Turkey has 
turned to secularism, must Egypt stand for the Mos- 


THE NEAR EAST 


115 

lem culture. Egypt is in fact torn between two 
ideals : to be the torchbearer of Islam, and to be in 
the eyes of Europe a good European. Her political 
development has been under the influence of Britain, 
and the denouement now reached in the signing of 
the Anglo-Egyptian treaty means the establishment 
of responsible parliamentary government. This is to 
be done in a country where the Sharia still reigns in 
the sphere of personal law. The constitution of 
Egypt states that “ Islam is the religion of Egypt,” 
and this has definitely been interpreted to mean that 
other religious groups must behave as guests and not 
regard themselves as having the same rights as Mos¬ 
lems. 

The problem of the right of conversion has been a 
grave issue in Egypt for years past. There have been 
test cases, taken to the courts, which have shown con¬ 
clusively that whatever modification may be granted 
privately in individual cases, it is not possible for an 
unmarried Moslem girl to become a Christian in the 
sense of securing any legal recognition for the change. 
The case does not come to the Sharia court as one of 
conversion, but as a case for the custody of a child, 
and the result is always the same—the girl is handed 
over to Moslem guardianship. 

The constitution of Egypt, granted in 1922, stated 
that “ liberty of conscience is absolute.” We en¬ 
counter here the fundamental difference that marks 
off the orthodox Islamic view from that of the West¬ 
ern mind. To any ordinary Western man it would 
seem axiomatic that “ absolute liberty of conscience ” 
included the liberty to change your religion if your 
conscience led you that way. But to the Moslem it is 


11 6 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

not so. It means that there is liberty for the Coptic 
Christian to continue a Copt, for the Armenian to 
continue an Armenian, for the Jew to continue a 
Jew. Meanwhile there is provision made by law for 
the registration of converts from Christianity to 
Islam, and the pressure of society and of legal advan¬ 
tage is such that the rate of secession to Islam among 
the Copts, which five years ago was about four hun¬ 
dred a year, is now, I was told, fifteen hundred and 
likely to rise higher. 4 

It is not, therefore, a matter for surprise that the 
minorities look to the future with some trepidation. 
In recent years the Copts have on the whole sided 
with the Egyptian nationalist movement, and the 
Wafd party, which has an overwhelming popular 
hold, numbered several Copts among its leaders. To 
what extent this arose from a genuine national feel¬ 
ing and to what extent it was due to fear lest an 
attitude of aloofness might be more dangerous in the 
long run, it is hard to say. Probably both motives 
have been present. But the last two years have -seen 
a number of somewhat gross instances of members of 
the minority communities suffering in the competi¬ 
tion for government appointments and in other ways 
at the hands of the Moslem majority, and there is 
now much anxiety. But it is a right as well as an 
inevitable policy that has led to the signing of the 
treaty, and there is ground for hope that the settling 
of the long-standing issue between Britain and Egypt 
may release the constructive energies of the country 

4 It is germane to mention here that the number of Englishwomen 
who have married Egyptian Moslems and become Moslems, mainly 
under the pressure of legal disability, is increasing. 


THE NEAR EAST 117 

in such a way as to still the voice of communal 
animosity. 

But the church-state mentality is still there. It is 
shown not only in the conversion problem but in the 
sphere of education. In the public elementary 
schools Moslem teaching was made compulsory and 
it was only with much difficulty that the Copts could 
secure permission to give Christian teaching to their 
children. Even when this permission had been 
granted, it was still only permission to teach in build¬ 
ings outside the school—though there might be none 
available—and the social pressure on the Coptic 
parents to send their children to the koranic teach¬ 
ing is very great. It is pointed out, for instance, 
that the lessons are invaluable for the learning of 
good Arabic. 

While thus hostile to Christian teaching and evan¬ 
gelism, the bulk of Moslem public opinion is pre¬ 
posterously sensitive on the subject of Islam. The 
American University of Cairo, whose standing with 
the public has always been very high, is from time to 
time assailed because of the existence in its library 
of books “ defaming Islam/’ which turn out to be 
books of unquestioned and objective scholarship. 
The antimissionary press campaign of 1933 was char¬ 
acterized by an amazing depth of credulity in the 
things that were said about the methods of mis¬ 
sionaries. One of the commonest charges was the 
employment of hypnotism ! But it has always to be 
remembered that behind all Egyptian parties lies the 
Moslem mob, and no party can afford to have it said 
that it is remiss in defending the rights of Islam ; the 
safest thing in times of political excitement is to err 


Il8 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

in the direction of partisan enthusiasm, and to attack 
the “ evangelists ” can never be amiss. 

It is, therefore, on all grounds highly to be desired 
that in the negotiations which attend the entry of 
Egypt to the League of Nations some such guarantees 
be given in regard to religious freedom and the treat¬ 
ment of minorities as were given by Iraq at the termi¬ 
nation of the mandate. 

The orthodoxy of the Azhar, however, is not the 
whole of Egyptian Islam. There has been for years a 
struggle within that institution between those who 
desired to modernize the curriculum and those who 
stood fast in the old ways. In 1935 the reforming 
Sheikh el Maraghi was once more installed as rector, 
and the Council of Ministers has now approved a 
new set of regulations whereby the modern scientific 
spirit is to be introduced into all Islamic studies, 
courses in the comparative study of religion are to be 
offered, and the knowledge of a foreign language 
made compulsory. These with certain other reforms 
mark a complete victory for the “ forward ” party. 
Another sign of the times is the decision to have an 
authorized translation of the Koran made into the 
English language ; not a literal translation but one 
designed to convey the real meaning of the book. 
This proposal was violently attacked as well as de¬ 
fended in the Arabic press. 

Egypt, moreover, is being drawn more and more 
into the world economic order. The great extension 
of cotton growing has on the whole been socially 
advantageous to the people, for it has given employ¬ 
ment throughout the year and thereby diminished 
crime. But the keeping of virtually the whole coun- 


THE NEAR EAST 


1X 9 

try under water by perennial irrigation, through 
works stretching from Khartoum to the sea, has 
tended to spread debilitating disease. As the wealth 
of the country grows—and cotton has greatly in¬ 
creased it—there are better police protection in the 
villages, better canals, roads and communications. 
This has led to a decrease in fanaticism. European 
dress is being adopted by educated people, especially 
in the larger towns, as well as by laborers who are in 
close touch with European technique, as in mechani¬ 
cal occupations. One consequence of this change has 
been the growth of a tendency to look down upon 
the sheikhs (religious teachers) as belonging to a 
lower social class than the effendi (educated man) 
and this has led to public protests from sheikhs who 
are obliged to wear robes in their ceremonial and 
educational duties. Egyptians themselves say that 
very few educated men pray or fast or indeed think 
sympathetically at all of religion. But this does not 
in any way minimize their loyalty to Islam as a com¬ 
munity. 

Palestine is an example of a totally different form 
of government from any we have yet described. It is 
under mandate, and the mandatory power. Great 
Britain, has also the duty, conformably to the general 
terms of the mandate, to build up in Palestine a 
Jewish national home. The recent stubborn trouble 
between Jew and Arab in Palestine has made the 
complexity of this problem familiar to the whole 
world. It is almost certain that if the population of 
Palestine alone were to be considered, or even a 
moderate increase in it, the problem would be easily 
soluble. It is already plain that the economic capac- 


120 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

ity of Palestine is greater than was once thought, and 
the Jews have shown what can be done. But we have 
not only to think of a group of Arabs and a group 
of Jews domiciled in Palestine, but of two world 
forces, Jewry and Islam, to each of which Palestine is 
a holy land. Zionism through the mouths of its 
wilder leaders desires not a national home in Pales¬ 
tine, but Palestine as a national home. The Arabs 
have never accepted the idea of the Jewish home, and 
claim that promises were made to them during the 
war that have not been fulfilled. Moslems outside 
Palestine watch with keen interest what goes on in 
the country, and the burial of Mahomed Ali, the 
Indian Moslem leader at the Round Table Con¬ 
ference, within the area of the mosque in Jerusalem, 
was a sign of the interest of world Islam. 

One hopeful feature is the excellent quality of the 
German Jews who have entered Palestine in flight 
from the nazi policy of modern Germany. They are 
not Zionists ; indeed—to quote a jest that is going 
the rounds—the new immigrant is asked, “ Do you 
come from conviction or from Germany ? ” But 
they are tolerant and civilized persons, accustomed to 
working with Christians, and their influence, though 
not yet numerically great, is exerted in the interests 
of concord and understanding. 

There is a far better opportunity for the Christian 
school in Palestine than in any other part of the Near 
East. Under the mandate there is complete religious 
freedom. (I may here note that in Palestine there 
exists a simple and admirable system for registering 
conversion of every kind.) There is therefore the 
chance to develop really strong Christian schools in 


THE NEAR EAST 


121 


which a worthy policy of Christian education can be 
carried out. I had the good fortune to be present at 
a conference of teachers at which almost all the varied 
groups of Christians in Palestine were represented, 
and I have never attended any meeting of Christian 
educators anywhere in the East that seemed more full 
of ideas and of hope. The Christian schools are, of 
course, open to all communities, and are able to 
perform an invaluable ministry of reconciliation. It 
is pleasant to be able to say this, when it is unfortu¬ 
nately true that the Christian church has somewhat 
signally failed to offer any reconciling ministry be¬ 
tween Jew and Arab, being almost entirely Arab in 
sympathy, through racial ties. 

I think that what has been said in this chapter, 
sketchy as it necessarily has to be, will show how 
great are the difficulties that confront the work of 
Christian evangelism in the Near East. I have no 
space to write of Iraq or Arabia or north Africa. I 
might add one bit of testimony from Syria. In 1935 
the representative of the French mandatory power, 
answering a question about religious freedom at the 
meeting of the Permanent Mandates Commission, 
frankly stated that the administration preferred not 
to expose converts to the risk of murder by pressing 
for toleration. The difficulties proceeding from the 
Moslem church-state idea are plain. In so far as they 
are being replaced by other difficulties arising from 
intense nationalism, it can hardly be held that the 
situation is eased. Nationalism may be a releasing 
of new energy and power, and when that is the case 
there is some preparation for the Christian message 
of freedom and release. But it may be a tyrannical 


122 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

organization of life around some myth of race or 
blood ; it is incalculable ; it may have nothing what¬ 
ever to do with freedom. A great authority has com¬ 
mented upon the fact that the mandates commission 
had to deal with such questions as that of the As¬ 
syrians in Iraq at a time “ when the totalitarian na¬ 
tional state was taking the place of the multi-national 
empire as the standard form of parochial political 
organization. The Assyrians in Iraq were the victims 
of the same turn of the political wheel as the Ger¬ 
mans in Poland or the Jews in Germany—and from 
the humanitarian standpoint the change was not for 
the better, for the subject nationalities of the old 
regime had not been faced with that prospect of the 
total suppression of their national individuality 
which was the prospective doom, under the new 
regime, of the alien minorities.” 5 

Before we close this survey there are some things 
that must be said about the life of the church itself 
in these lands of the Near East. There is a certain 
stirring within the ancient churches. Societies are 
being formed within them, such as the Zoe movement 
in Greece and a similar one in Rumania, for the 
stimulation of vital religion. Preaching centers are 
being opened in the villages around Cairo, and 
though these were intended primarily for arousing 
the Copts it is frequently the case that Moslems also 
attend the meetings—a wholly admirable develop¬ 
ment, and one that perhaps points the way to the 
future of evangelization in Egypt. At present a con¬ 
vert is nearly always rooted out of his environment 

5 Professor A. J. Toynbee, Survey of International Affairs, 1934, 
p. 114. 


THE NEAR EAST 


123 


and has no society ready naturally to receive him. 
It is surely plain that the ancient churches, that have 
during so many centuries kept the faith and resisted 
intense persecution, have now, with all their back¬ 
wardness, a great part to play in the evangelization of 
Islam. 

The membership of the Protestant churches has 
mainly (though there are exceptions, as we have 
seen) been drawn from the ranks of the older 
churches, and while this was done with the object of 
building up a strongly aggressive and evangelistic 
Christianity, it has aroused intense jealousy and feel¬ 
ing among the ancient churches and has not, on the 
whole, produced Protestant churches that are 
markedly different from the older bodies in their at¬ 
titude to Moslems. Moreover, the tone of Christian 
thought and life in these countries has been to a large 
extent set by Islam. It was said to me by several of 
the most experienced missionaries in the whole region 
that one of their greatest tasks was to awaken in the 
church a more Christian idea of God, and to with¬ 
stand the insistence on dogmatic orthodoxy and out¬ 
ward observance to the neglect of the inner life of 
religion. 

But the greatest difficulty of all is just that there 
is not enough love for the Moslem on the part of the 
Christian. This is intelligible enough—there are 
centuries of history behind it. The Moslem has been 
and is the ruler; he judges Christianity by the prod¬ 
ucts of the harried and downtrodden ancient 
churches ; he is contemptuous. The Christian for 
his part has often learned subservience; his ex¬ 
perience of converts from Islam has often been unfor- 


124 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tunate ; he does not much believe in the conversion 
of Islam. The small number and the uprooting of 
the converts makes it hard for them to grow, and so 
we have something of a vicious circle. 

It is a matter for much thankfulness, therefore, 
that in spite of all these innumerable obstacles there 
is today more concern for the evangelization of Islam 
among Christians in the Near East, and more prayer 
for it, than there has been for many years past. Both 
among the evangelical churches and the ancient com¬ 
munions and among the missionaries there is the 
stirring of new hope. It is felt that the Moslems have 
somehow or other been given a wholly wrong notion 
of what Christianity is, and that there must be rea¬ 
sons for this which can be discovered so that new 
ways may be followed. It may be, perhaps, that along 
with a new and well based evangelistic movement 
will go new ways of service. The Near East has been 
distinguished for the great missionary colleges of 
American foundation. Some of these still do great 
work, others find the new restrictions crushing. But 
the changing economic needs of the people both in 
the rural areas and in the towns may yet reveal ways 
of constructive service which will enable Christians 
to show to those who have so much ground for preju¬ 
dice against them that there is in their hearts nothing 
but love for the Moslem, and that the offer of the 
gospel is not a piece of imperialism or diplomacy, nor 
merely an expression of dogmatic fidelity, but the 
offer of what is most precious in life. 


PART II 


REFLECTIONS 





V 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 

T HE picture which I have tried to draw in the 
preceding pages is, I hope, reasonably objective. 
Any statement of a situation is bound to be colored 
by the convictions of the person who makes it, be¬ 
cause it is from that source that all judgments of 
value must necessarily come. But I have tried to let 
the facts as I saw them speak to me, and not to insist 
on seeing only such facts as suited my book. Out of 
that broad sketch two things stand out conspicuously. 
The first is the increasing menace and difficulty that 
surround and threaten the whole Christian enter¬ 
prise and the very existence of the Christian church, 
as a body pledged by the terms of its foundation to 
spread its message to all mankind. The second is 
the steady growth and deepening of the evangelistic 
spirit in the church, and the widening range of suc¬ 
cess (I use that word in a religious sense) with which 
the preaching of the gospel is meeting. 

One has the feeling of living in a time when great 
opposing forces are coming to a life-and-death strug¬ 
gle, Berdyaev writes of “ the end of our time.” 
There is widely spread the conviction that the cul¬ 
tural tradition which began with the Renaissance, 
and whose dominant note has been the autonomy of 
the individual, is coming to an end, and that some¬ 
thing new is being born. That same cultural tradi- 
127 


128 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tion has, as we have seen, powerfully influenced the 
thinking East. It will pass away there more slowly, 
just because it is derivative ; to take but one in¬ 
stance, there is, I sometimes think, more talk about 
democracy in the East than in the West today. But 
already we can see how each of the two great rival 
ideas that in the West have supplanted in so many 
minds the older notions of liberty and the individual 
is establishing itself in the East—nationalism or 
fascism or racialism on the one hand, and commu¬ 
nism on the other. 

To many minds in the West it is now axiomatic 
that there is to be a struggle between these two rival 
creeds, as truly a religious war as any in the past, as 
ruthless and terrible as the Thirty Years’ War and 
far more widely spread in its devastation. Spain to¬ 
day is the scene of just such a struggle, and as I write 
it is impossible to be sure that the flame will not 
spread to the rest of Europe. The democracies of 
Britain, France and America are not confronted with 
so simple a choice, and may well hold that they know 
and will maintain a better way. Yet they must recog¬ 
nize the passion that possesses the devotees of the 
other creeds and the absoluteness of the claims they 
make. The tolerant spirit of democracy is scarcely 
enough to counter their absolutisms. There is need 
of a truer vision, a deeper devotion, a sacrificial spirit 
still more unreserved. A Christian who ponders over 
these things will see not only these secular signs of 
menace and of the ruin that follows upon the clash 
of irreconcilable hates, but the proof in the world’s 
life of the redeeming activity of a loving God. Is 
there a Christian way ? 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 129 

It is utterly useless for any of us to speak about 
Christianity today unless we mean something as 
great as this. It is vital to the world situation that it 
is today the scene of religious struggle. I shall write 
separately of those problems which inhere in the in¬ 
terrelation of the church with the state and the com¬ 
munity, but I must here note that there are in the 
two creeds referred to above some of the marks of re¬ 
ligion. Both communism and racial nationalism are 
religious in these two supremely important respects : 
first, that they claim the whole man for their service 
and embrace within their scope the whole of life ; 
and second, that they are absolute in that they do 
not seek to justify their claims by reference to any 
other standard—for instance, the principles of rea¬ 
son—but are in themselves of absolute worth and 
speak as such to their followers. 

This is the connection in which we in the West 
have to speak of Christianity. It is the same in the 
East, with this difference—that there the background 
to the characteristically modern struggle is supplied 
by the ancient non-Christian religions, while in the 
West the former unification of life was supplied by 
the Christian system. But in the East Christianity is 
weak, relatively young, associated with foreign adven¬ 
ture or rule, and even today acknowledged by per¬ 
haps only one per cent of the masses of Asia. It is in 
Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam that the countries 
of which I have been writing have found in past 
years the unification of life. Hinduism, for instance, 
was never merely a religion in the sense that it offered 
a private consolation to the individual soul; it was 
the inspiration of a social order. So with Islam and 


130 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

so with Buddhism. But those days are passing, and 
for the educated classes and those who through the 
power of the industrial revolution have been brought 
within the orbit of the Western culture, I do not be¬ 
lieve that the old religions have holding and life- 
giving power. 

What then of Christianity? I recall a remark 
made to me by a shrewd Indian Christian who had 
visited China. He said that three big things had 
come from the West to China. The first was science ; 
the second was communism ; the third was Chris¬ 
tianity, but it was so vague that everyone seemed to 
understand it in a different sense. There is some 
truth in this, not only with regard to China. Those 
of us who believe that the religion of which Jesus 
Christ is the center holds the key to all the problems 
of life and thought must not blind ourselves to the 
fact that under its name are preached the most di¬ 
verse beliefs. An infallible church ; an infallible 
Book; a moral ideal for human conduct; an other¬ 
worldly pietism ; a social and international program ; 
a pure pacifism ; the consecration of force ; the cor¬ 
porative state ; the communist state—I might mul¬ 
tiply endlessly the opposites which are today preached 
by reputable Christians as things necessary to or pro¬ 
ceeding from the understanding of the Christian re¬ 
ligion. 

Then there is all the controversy that gathers 
round the central figure. Perhaps this is now result¬ 
ing in a certain increase of definiteness and clarity. 
At least it is plain that the naive idea that you could 
drop the Epistles overboard and rest your historical 
sense securely on a teaching ministry extracted from 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 131 

the Synoptic Gospels, has to be abandoned even by 
those who most dislike St. Paul, for the new criticism 
shows that a doctrine of a divine redeeming savior is 
at the back of the Synoptics. Again, the struggle 
between those who held that nothing mattered in 
Christ’s teaching except the eschatology (the teaching 
about the last things) and those who held that it was 
no true part of his teaching at all, seems to be settling 
itself, and it begins to be plain that our Lord 
preached not the coming of a future kingdom but 
that the kingdom had come. 

Dr. C. H. Dodd has recently drawn attention, in 
a small book 1 of high importance, to the fact that 
there is a clear distinction drawn in the New Testa¬ 
ment between the “ preaching ” and the “ teaching.” 
(The Greek words are respectively kerygma and 
didache.) The former was what was set before the 
non-Christian world. It was Christianity presented 
as news. It was the cutting edge of the gospel. The 
latter followed upon it. It comprised instruction in 
the life of Christ and his teaching, in Christian 
morals and a host of other things. But first came 
the preaching. I think that this distinction is of the 
highest importance for the missionary planning of 
the church. 

What came into the “ preaching ” ? If we look at 
the Acts of the Apostles it is not difficult to see in the 
sermons of St. Peter and others in the early chapters, 
backed up by the much more copious material later 
obtainable from St. Paul, what were the main things 
that were “ preached.” Here are some central 
phrases : 

1 The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (Willett, Clark). 


I $2 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom 
ye slew, hanging him on a tree. Him did God 
exalt with his right hand to be a prince and a 
savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and remis¬ 
sion of sins. And we are witnesses of these things ; 
and so is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given 
to them that obey him [Acts 5:30-32]. 

Him being delivered up by the determinate 
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hands 
of lawless men did crucify and slay ; whom God 
raised up, having loosed the pangs of death : . . . 
whereof we all are witnesses. Being therefore by 
the right hand of God exalted, and having re¬ 
ceived of the Father the promise of the Holy 
Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and 
hear [Acts 2:23-24, 32-33]. 

Be baptized every one of you into the name of 
Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins ; and 
ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost [Acts 
2:38]. 

The things which God foreshowed by the mouth 
of all the prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he 
thus fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and turn 
again, that your sins may be blotted out, that so 
there may come seasons of refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord ; and that he may send the 
Christ who hath been appointed for you, even 
Jesus [Acts 3:18-20]. 

Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed him 
with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went 
about doing good, and healing all that were op¬ 
pressed of the devil; for God was with him. And 
we are witnesses of all things which he did . . . 
whom also they slew hanging him upon a tree. 
Him God raised up the third day, and gave him to 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 133 

be made manifest . . . unto witnesses that were 
chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and 
drink with him after he rose from the dead. And 
he charged us to preach unto the people, and to 
testify that this is he which is ordained of God to be 
the judge of quick and dead. To him bear all the 
prophets witness, that through his name every one 
that believeth on him shall receive remission of 
sins [Acts 10:38-43]. 

I do not think it can be denied that there was a 
definite conviction in the minds of those who spoke 
in this way that they were not urging upon their 
hearers the acceptance of an ideal, but announcing 
to them that something of eternal significance and 
value had happened. Their preaching was, in a 
sense, narration, and all Christian witness is in a 
measure narration. It is the telling of what has hap¬ 
pened. 

The preaching, then, was to this effect. God had 
revealed to his people that he had a purpose for them, 
by his long schooling of the Jews. In the course of 
that preparation he had led them to look for one who 
as the chosen of the Father should suffer for men’s 
sins. This expectation was fulfilled in Jesus of Naza¬ 
reth, who was put to death on the cross after showing 
by his works of love and his victory over the power of 
the devil that the life of the new age was in him. He 
was raised from the dead, showing thus that death 
and sin were vanquished and that a new power had 
entered into human affairs. For those who should 
believe in him and his atoning death there was re¬ 
mission of sins. He had received from the Father 
the power of the Spirit, and this power was shed upon 


134 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

those who believed in him and in the community of 
believers, so that a new creation had come to be. 
The whole order of history was to find its meaning in 
these events, and would be ended in a universal judg¬ 
ment by Christ for the Father. 

The pages of the New Testament show how fully 
the task of teaching, as distinct from the preaching of 
the fundamental news, was undertaken. The mem¬ 
oirs of the life and death and resurrection of the Lord 
were compiled, and all the difficult ethical problems 
that had to be faced in the early church were dis¬ 
cussed and weighty advice recorded. But beneath it 
all lay that which was first presented to those with¬ 
out the Word, the news of the redeeming act of 
God in Christ. 

It is, first, a doctrine of the living God working in 
history. Here lies one of the profound differences 
between biblical religion and all other. There is no 
other religious tradition in the world in which so 
continuous insistence is laid upon the working of 
God in history. For both Hinduism and Buddhism, 
with all the varieties of sect and school that distin¬ 
guish them, it is true that the world of historical 
events is an unreal world. Even the great chain of 
cause and effect represented by the Hindu law of 
karma is not real in the sense that Brahma is real ; 
while for the Buddhist the action of karma is due in 
the last resort only to the existence of desire, and will 
cease when that is eliminated. The life of the good 
man in either tradition is not to be spent in doing 
good so much as in perfecting release and escaping 
from the personal world of unreality. Even the Con- 
fucian tradition, with all its practical emphasis on the 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 135 

human and social virtues, speaks of thousands and 
thousands of years through which the human cycle 
rolls, only to return upon itself. The Stoics, who 
were of great influence among educated people in the 
time of our Lord, held to the doctrine of endless re¬ 
currence ; the great wheel of history turned round 
and round and came back full circle to where it be¬ 
gan—but no fruit was garnered and there was no 
meaning in the process. Dr. Edwyn Bevan suggests 2 
that it may have been an element in the success of 
the gospel preaching that to a generation weary of 
the futility of things the Christians preached that 
history was real, because God worked in it his eternal 
purpose. 

That the living God works in history was the core 
of the prophetic message. The historical books of 
the Old Testament are not mere annals; they con¬ 
tain the record of the judgment and mercy of God 
as the writers, influenced by the prophets, saw the 
history of the chosen people in the light of prophetic 
truth. In the clash of the great powers of the old 
days—Egypt, Assyria and Babylon—and the relations 
of the Jewish nation with them, the prophets saw the 
judgment of God. If they wished to recall to mind 
the power and might of God they would make men¬ 
tion of his mighty works, how that he had brought 
the people up from Egypt, and turned again the 
captivity of Zion. 

What links the Jewish tradition together through¬ 
out the checkered history of the nation is the vision 
of a purpose of God being worked out in the events 
of history, and the hope of a final fulfillment. That 
2 Christianity , pp. 35-36. 


136 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

fulfillment is in the coming of Christ, who is there¬ 
fore only truly to be apprehended as coming “ in the 
fullness of the times.” The temporal process, already 
known as the vehicle of divine action, will be brought 
to a close in judgment, for if history is the record 
not of aimless chance but of divine action that action 
and purpose must have an end. 

I have called this a doctrine of the living God, and 
the word is all-important. It makes literally all the 
difference in the world whether we believe in a God 
who is only the result achieved by our thinking, the 
postulate of our moral action, or in One who is liv¬ 
ing, who is before us, before our thought and before 
our action, who plans and acts and chooses, whose is 
the great initiative, who is the creator, redeemer and 
judge. Before such a God the human question is 
not, “ Can I believe in God ? ” but “ What wouldst 
Thou have me to do ? ” This is what is meant in the 
difficult and yet luminous language of Karl Barth 
when he says that God is not “ object ” but “ sub¬ 
ject.” We deal with the Living One, not with one 
whom, though we may concede that he lives, we treat 
only as one called in by our need or accredited by our 
thought. 

The doctrine, in the second place, is a doctrine of 
God made man. All the preparation of history and 
all the manifold workings of God come to a head in 
one supreme event. The Word that was in the be¬ 
ginning with God took flesh. Only so, in a profound 
simplicity, could the loving purpose of God be fully 
known. But it is not a doctrine of incarnation as so 
much of the world has known incarnation—a the- 
ophany, a miraculous portent without reference to 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 137 

the complex web of history, still less a mere facet of 
the divine side by side with many other incarnations. 
The church clung to the history of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Pontius Pilate got into the Apostles’ Creed as a bit of 
contemporary history. Born of woman, born under 
the law, Jesus of Nazareth lived a human life at a 
definite point in space and time, within the bounds 
of our mortality. Nor was it a sham humanity, as of 
a demigod in the heathen mythologies, walking the 
earth masked in human form. He was hungry, he 
was disappointed, he knew what it was to be deserted 
by his friends, he faced the power of the mob, he 
loved little children, he rejoiced in the gladness of 
fellowship. But in this true manhood he showed 
himself to be in heart and mind and will utterly 
united with the Father, so that he spoke to men not 
out of the spiritual learning of the saint but out of an 
inner authority. In him were released, not for show 
or to prove a point, but in divine compassion on hu¬ 
man need, the divine power over disease and the 
powers of evil. 

When the disciples came to find words for what he 
was they groped among the vocabularies of the time. 
He was a prince, a savior, a pioneer of life. But they 
were always sure of two things, which found expres¬ 
sion later in the philosophical language of the creeds : 
He was truly man ; and he was truly God. Nothing 
can go beyond what St. Paul says in the Epistle to the 
Colossians (1:15-17), that Christ is the image of the 
invisible God, that in him creation finds its meaning, 
and that in him the whole established order holds 
together. 

Christian thought has never been unaware that in 


138 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

holding thus firmly to a doctrine which resolutely 
finds the eternal in time and the universal in one 
particular, it was embracing as an age-long possession 
a profound metaphysical difficulty. The Christian 
doctrine is not of life, light and love ; it is of God 
becoming man for our salvation. It is not for me here 
to argue this position, but I would add that all the 
most vigorous periods in the church’s intellectual 
life are those in which she has most faithfully held to 
the double truth of an event in time supremely and 
uniquely indicative of eternal reality. It was always 
easy to slip to either side, to offer a Greek view of the 
eternal qualities of God, serene above history, or a 
picture of a heroic and inspiring character, greater 
than Socrates or the Buddha, but not the redeemer 
of the world. 

Redeemer—that is the third point. It is a doctrine 
of forgiveness and saving from sin. By redemption I 
mean in the most definite sense a radical dealing with 
sin, in the past, in the present and in the future. This 
is no place to enter into argument over different theo¬ 
ries of the atonement. Let us rather recall what hap¬ 
pened. We have first the hints that are thrown out in 
the Old Testament of one who should be numbered 
with the transgressors though he had done no vio¬ 
lence, of whom it could be said that he bore the sin of 
many, and that by his stripes we are healed. Our 
Lord himself had much in mind the book in which 
the most famous of these prophecies are set down. 
Interwoven with his parabolic teaching and his mira¬ 
cles and works of mercy we find mysterious sayings 
that point not only to a death voluntarily embraced 
but to the sense that it had to do with the sins of men 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 139 

and the ransom of many. We move with the gospel 
record through the earlier time, when his preaching 
was almost popular, to the turning of the crowd 
against him and the gathering of the clouds of enmity 
above his head. In every word and deed he enforces 
on us the conviction that in him there is a unique 
and unshared relationship with the Father, and we 
begin to gain some faint, remote glimpse of what it 
might mean that one should enter into and bear upon 
his own self the sins of men—what, it may be, St. 
Paul meant, in the most mysterious of all his words, 
when he says of Christ that “ he was made to be sin 
for us ” (II Cor. 5:21). Never is there the note of 
the empty though splendid tragedy, of the hero whose 
faithfulness leaves us asking, “To what end this 
waste ? ” Always it is a conscious acceptance of the 
Father’s will; here supremely he is about his Father’s 
business ; here, in the showing of perfect obedience 
and perfect love, he is releasing the powers of a new 
age. The earliest preaching speaks of “ remission of 
sins,” and whatever later ages may have made of it 
no one can read the New Testament and not hear 
something of the sound of joy and release into new 
life and power that sings through the pages. Through 
the love and passion and death of Jesus they had be¬ 
come certain of the forgiveness of God ; Jesus had 
done for them what they could not have done for 
themselves ; the old fetters had been broken and a 
new power had come into life. The cross is linked 
always with the resurrection—again, never the exal¬ 
tation of a mere portent, as if the truth received va¬ 
lidity because a dead body had been reanimated. It 
is a double manifestation of the loving power and 


140 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

counsel of God ; first in the life and death of the be¬ 
loved, in which God is found to be drawing men to 
himself and reconciling them to him, and then in the 
triumphant manifestation of the divine power, a 
power of which the ordinary Christian life was to be 
a continuous expression. The dramas of crucifixion 
and resurrection were to be repeated in each be¬ 
liever’s life ; he was to die to the old self and to rise 
in the power of the new age, and it was to be no 
vague power that moved him, but the spirit of Jesus. 

Let us note, moreover, two things of crucial im¬ 
portance here. First, it is God who initiates, not 
man. The world is full of the self-mortifications of 
those who have tried (and are at this hour trying in 
innumerable places of pilgrimage and sacrifice all 
over the world) to get right with God and rid them¬ 
selves of the burden of sin by their own effort and 
offering and agony. Here it is God in Christ that 
draws men to himself. 

The other consideration is the tremendous effect 
which this doctrine, if believed, must have upon our 
thought of man. If man is, as St. Paul saw once and 
for all, not primarily Jew or Greek, white or colored, 
learned or ignorant, rich or poor, proletarian or 
bourgeois—not any of these things, but “ my brother 
for whom Christ died,” then a great deal of the 
world’s policies stands immediately condemned. 

Fourth, it is a doctrine of society . Nothing is more 
remote from the New Testament teaching than the 
idea that religion is a matter of private consolation, 
without bearing upon the actual world in which we 
live. Right back to Abraham and all through the 
prophets there is the idea of the divine society, the 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 


141 


remnant, the suffering community, the ideal congre¬ 
gation. The church is the divine society in which the 
Spirit dwells. The individual Christian lives in the 
Spirit, but it is a life lived in fellowship, and the 
fellowship is not that of the club, based upon human 
likes and dislikes, but is drawn from the gift and life 
of Christ himself. 

This church, this body of Christ, though not of 
the world is still very much in the world. It is remote 
from the Christian spirit to think of the church as 
withdrawing from the world into a unity of its own. 
The redeemed life which it manifests is the restora¬ 
tion of that which was ordained in creation ; it is not 
alien to the world, however much the world may 
think so ; it is the true way of living. If the church 
is the token and earnest of the kingdom, that final 
consummation of all things, it is to witness to the life 
of the kingdom in the life of the world. It is to resist 
in the name of Christ all that is contrary to the spirit 
of Christ, not treating the world as if it had no right 
and wrong within it, but equally withstanding the 
notion that men can invent a human society so good 
and well adjusted that it shall no longer need to be 
redeemed. 

Christians therefore from the earliest times until 
now have found themselves to be citizens of two king¬ 
doms, or rather, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, 
dwellers in one country and yet seekers after another. 
There is a tension in all real Christian discipleship 
between that which is and that which should be, be¬ 
tween our duty to the established order of things and 
our witness to the better order which can come only 
as men have faith and will believe. 


142 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Last, it is a doctrine of man. Perhaps it is here, 
even more than in what they think about God, that 
modern men differ most from one another. What is 
man ? asked the psalmist; and we are told today, vari¬ 
ously, that he is what his blood and race are ; that he 
is what his nation is; that he is the resultant of an 
economic process and interplay of forces; that he is 
the lord of the world. I know of no view other than 
the Christian that deals realistically with man and 
with the truth of his complex nature. The Christian 
faith knows nothing of man as alone by himself in the 
world ; it knows of man in relation to God and to his 
fellow man. It sees him held in a perpetual contra¬ 
diction : a contradiction between the image in which 
he was made, the image of God, and that corrupted 
nature which sin has made of him. Surely, as a 
matter of plain experience, both things are true—the 
divine image and the marring of it ? But the Chris¬ 
tian faith goes on with a third assertion, that the lost 
or marred image can be restored by Christ. 

The secret of living, then, is to die to self, which 
means among other things to desert the whole range 
of ideas associated with the autonomy of man and his 
inherent worth and dignity, and to yield to the truth 
that life is a matter of persons living together, finding 
the will and the call of God in the demands which 
they make on one another, and allowing the spirit of 
Christ, which is not that of discord or aloofness, but 
of love, joy, peace, to re-create from within. 

There are two marks that always appeal to me as 
peculiarly eloquent of the Christian spirit in the 
sphere of action. One is the exhibition of certain 
virtues that are hardly even within the scope of the 
standard cardinal virtues, and seem rather silly and 


THE GOSPEL AND THE NEW AGE 143 

even wrong to the just and worldly mind. I mean 
such things as loving your enemies, going the second 
mile, turning the other cheek—all those difficult 
things, so difficult to any of us who take our ethical 
ideals merely from the better standards of the life 
around us. For these are the direct fruits of the 
spirit of Jesus. The foolishness in these acts, the 
irrationality, is of the same order as his who, when 
we were yet sinners, died for the ungodly. 

The other is that spirit of infinite debt that seems 
to color and inspire the fullest Christian discipleship. 
If you turn to the Jesuits, faithful under the tortures 
of the Indians in Canada, or to William Carey amid 
his astounding labors in Serampore, or to the Wesleys, 
or to any saint of any Christian breed, you always find 
the same thing, whatever differences may coexist. It 
is the sense that the debt that the Christian soul owes 
to God in Christ is so great, so infinite, so beyond 
speech or telling, that nothing save a wholly surren¬ 
dered life can be offered, and that even such a life is 
in no way a payment for what has been done. Pro 
tanto quid retribuamus? This is the secret of the 
passionate service, joyful, unresting, and without a 
trace of self-regard, which is typical of the Christian 
life at its noblest. 

But here we have come back to where we began. 
This spirit that works out in service and in life, what 
is it but the result of the actual impact of the historic 
Lord Jesus upon the world of men ? It is all a part 
of that which happened when the Son of God became 
man and the Father “ bowed down to bless us in the 
Son.” 3 

8 A phrase of the late Prof. H. R. Mackintosh in The Person of 
Jesus Christ. 


VI 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 

I APOLOGIZE to the organizers of the conference 
to be held by the Universal Christian Council of 
Life and Work at Oxford, in July 1937, for borrow¬ 
ing the title of their meeting. I had thought of call¬ 
ing this chapter “ Church and Caesar,” but it is not 
only Caesar that concerns us. When we come to 
think over the problems of the Christian church in 
the face of the vast and difficult situation sketched in 
the earlier part of this book, and to relate to them 
the fundamental gospel, nothing presents itself as 
more urgent and complex than the connection of the 
church not only with the state but with that more 
nebulous but also more living and in the last resort 
more powerful thing, the community. 

This is not a problem of either East or West alone, 
but emphatically a world problem. There are, natu¬ 
rally enough, great differences among the countries 
and between East and West, broadly speaking, in the 
manner in which the question arises. The details are 
different, and the background of the past is different. 
But there are certain great facts that are common. 
There is, first, the authority normally exercised by 
the group—Roman or Mogul empire, or city-state in 
Greece, or village community anywhere in Asia— 
144 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 145 

over the life and actions of those who dwell within it. 
There is, in the second place, the disintegration of 
these old ideas by the rise in the West of the concep¬ 
tion of individual right and freedom, and the trans¬ 
mission of this conception to the East through 
literature, travel, education and other channels. 
There is, third, in these latter years the development 
of the ancient group authority into something more 
tyrannical than the old world knew, through the 
influence of a philosophy of the state. This is fun¬ 
damentally the same whether the authoritative com¬ 
munity is dominated by race or nationalism or by the 
economic vision of the communists. The newspapers 
are full of the evidences of these tendencies in the 
European world ; the tendencies are not less plain in 
the countries of the Near, Middle and Far East. But 
there is this great difference—that in the West the 
social and cultural background is impregnated with 
Christianity, and the church, even in such a country 
as Russia is today, remains a large and massive organ¬ 
ization ; in the East the background is Buddhist, 
Hindu, Shintoist, Confucian or Moslem, and the 
church in all its branches taken together is but a 
tiny thing. 

We have seen in some detail what the questions 
are. In Japan there is the rise of an authoritarian 
state, using the ancient religious veneration of the 
emperor as the means to an absolute state authority. 
This offers immediate dangers to the church, and 
those dangers have become more evident in Korea 
and Manchuria than in Japan, because it is in the 
outlying empire that the new theories are most 
strongly pressed. We have reflected also that if the 


146 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Japanese authority should have its way in China 
there is reason to fear for the Chinese church, 
both because it is a church and therefore cannot diso¬ 
bey God, and also because being intimately linked 
with world Christianity it offers a barrier to an in¬ 
troverted nationalism. 

In the Near East we have watched the engrossing 
struggle between the diametrically opposite concep¬ 
tions of the Moslem church-state and the rising na¬ 
tionalisms of the Near East countries ; but we have 
also noted that the new nationalism is not necessarily 
more tolerant of the Christian church than is the 
church-state of Moslem history. 

We have seen, moreover, that within Japan and 
China, and in a less though increasing measure in 
India, there are arising the communist passion and 
loyalty. This rise is created partly by propaganda 
from without but still more by the intolerable condi¬ 
tions under which hundreds of millions of people 
have to live. Perhaps because it is not rooted in the 
great natural heritages of race and nation but springs 
from the class organization of industrialism and looks 
to a future in which the ancient groupings are tran¬ 
scended by a class victory extending across the nations, 
communism is likely to be more tyrannical and more 
intolerant even than the mythologies of blood and 
race. These two great movements of nationalism 
and communism are, as we have seen, religious. They 
claim inherent and absolute authority; they claim 
the whole man ; men and women are prepared to die 
for them. 

But there is another range of problems before us 
also as we contemplate the Christian church in Asia. 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 147 

Not only the state but the community has to be kept 
in,mind. It is a great handicap to the church in 
almost every land that having been brought from 
without, often by the agency of Europeans or Ameri¬ 
cans, it is still foreign in aspect. Sometimes it even 
carries with it the air of sharing the superiority which 
the foreign power, political or economic, may enjoy. 
This is a matter of first importance for, as we shall 
see, it is not merely desirable on grounds of efficiency 
and convenience that the church breathe the same air 
as the community and be in solidarity with it; it is 
deeply necessary and right. 

It may be only a special case of the question just 
mentioned, but the relation of an indigenous church 
to the foreign imperial power ruling a country is 
often a crucial matter. We find something of this 
problem all over the East. Sovereign Japan does not 
know it within her own bounds, but there are signs 
already that Japanese Christian expansion, accom¬ 
panying that of the nation, may find itself faced by 
something of the same difficulties as the Christians of 
other expanding states have found. In China, though 
there was little political control, there was so large 
diplomatic and economic influence exercised by the 
foreign powers that the revolution was in one aspect 
a movement to free the country from foreign shackles, 
and the charge that the Chinese Christians were 
“ running dogs ” of the foreign imperialists is famil¬ 
iar. In the Netherlands Indies, where the state has 
been more openly committed to the propagation of 
the Christian religion than in any other part of the 
modern world, the difficulty takes the form that the 
church has little church-sense and is apt to be re- 


148 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

garded and to regard itself as a branch of the state. 
As the vigor of Javanese nationalism develops, the 
charge that Christianity is an aspect of Dutch domina¬ 
tion will certainly prove an obstacle to the growth of 
the church. In India it is well known that the diffi¬ 
culty is old and widely felt. In spite of the fact that 
a rigid neutrality in religion has been maintained by 
the British government in India, and that a number 
of British officials, in the picturesque American 
phrase, “ lean over backwards ” in their effort to 
maintain the desired impartiality, the notion is still 
widespread that Christianity is a part of the raj, and 
to the younger nationalist-minded Indians it may 
make the difference between private acceptance of 
the claim of Christ and outward profession. 

It is necessary also to note that though on the whole 
the Christian forces in the East are small, they are 
much stronger in some places than in others, and 
comprise very different types. The contrast is great, 
for example, between the urban, middle class edu¬ 
cated Christians of Japan, less than one per cent of 
the population, and the Syrian Christians of Travan- 
core who number about a quarter of the population ; 
or again, the relation of the church to the community 
is different in the case of the Bataks with their solid 
block of half a million Christians in the middle of 
Sumatra or the 85 per cent of Christians in the south 
of Celebes, from that of the little communities of 
Christians in the Near East. If there should be a 
great ingathering of untouchables to the church in 
India, obviously the whole community would be pro¬ 
foundly affected. 

What are the first principles ? What do we mean 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 


149 


by the church ? We must be clear about its funda¬ 
mental nature. It is the body of Christ, the commu¬ 
nity of those who are united in common faith, common 
love and common worship to him who is its life and 
its head, bound in loyalty to him, inspired by his 
spirit. Within the church the authority of Christ as 
king transcends all other loyalties. 

It is, further, the community of those who live by 
the divine miracle of the remission of sins. It is not a 
society of athletes in moral achievement, but a com¬ 
munity of those who, because they are the children 
of salvation and of divine grace, are born to a new 
life which impels them toward strenuous moral effort 
in the spirit of deepest humility. 1 

Again, continuing the prophetic idea of the chosen 
people, it is a community of “ the elect.” This does 
not mean a community of prigs who think themselves 
better than others, but of those who recognize that 
in the deepest things it is God’s call that matters and 
not man’s choice. 

But it is not a community in vacuo. It lives in the 
world, and this carries with it two implications. The 
first is that it shares in the imperfections of all hu¬ 
man things. It is made up of those who are “ being 
saved.” It is tainted with human sin and shortcom¬ 
ing. It must always be reaching out in penitence and 
faith toward the sources of the renewal of its life. As 
an institution (or, in our distressful condition, a se¬ 
ries of institutions) it is subject to the evils that beset 
all institutions—self-regard, cowardice and sloth. 
The second implication is that its unity is not to be 

X I take these sentences, as well as some ideas, from a paper by 
Dr. H. Kraemer of Java. 


1 50 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

thought of as something apart from the common 
family of mankind. Man was made by God of one 
blood, and the divisions that sunder humanity are 
not, as we so often think, more fundamental than 
the unity to which love calls us. The church, in that 
common faith and life which even its divisions can¬ 
not wholly obscure, points all mankind to the re¬ 
covery of a lost fellowship which God intends for his 
children. 

How does this guide us when we think of the rela¬ 
tion of the church to the community ? Surely it leads 
us to the conviction that the church should be in 
spirit and life as close to the community as it can be. 
This is not a matter of expediency but of truth. For 
the church looks to a God who is both Creator and 
Redeemer, and it must view with a reverent regard 
the works of his creation. Race and blood, language 
and family and all that belongs to the common funda¬ 
mental life of man then become a part of God’s fur¬ 
nishing of the house of human life. It is not merely 
politic that the church should be indigenous ; apart 
from a share in the common life of man it can have 
no life at all. 

Hence the immense importance of a strong native 
leadership in the church. I repeat that this is not a 
matter of tactics. We are being driven in these days 
of financial stringency to a larger trust in the indig¬ 
enous leadership of the younger churches, and some¬ 
times it looks to them as though it were only the 
economic argument that led the older churches in 
their missionary activity to this policy. Nothing 
could be further from the truth. It is not a money 
argument, nor even merely the recognition that the 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 151 

Christian people of the land are nearer to their own 
countrymen and can be evangelists and interpreters 
of Christ as no foreigner can be. It is an acknowledg¬ 
ment that a church that is faithful to the redeeming 
God must not forget the works of his creation. 

It is therefore a first necessity that the whole plan¬ 
ning of the life of the church in these great lands of 
the East should have in the forefront of policy the 
need for a truly indigenous leadership, and that in 
worship, church organization, education and social 
upbuilding the natural faculties and traditional her¬ 
itage of the people should be followed. Most of all 
is this true in the realms of worship and of Christian 
thought. Because worship is the deepest expression 
of itself that human nature knows, it is essential that 
it shall gather into itself everything that each people 
has to offer to God. Alien forms may have their 
place in the infancy of the church when there is no 
other alternative, but their permanence (except 
when as in some of the simplest and profoundest ele¬ 
ments in Christian worship they become native to 
every soil) can only make for a stunted life. 

Similarly, there is little that is so important in the 
Christian life of Asia as that there should be raised up 
a greater number of Christians with an original in¬ 
sight into the meaning of the Christian religion. By 
original I do not mean that they should hunt for the 
bizarre and the outre , still less that they should try, as 
has sometimes been done, to graft the Christian olive 
on to the Hindu or Buddhist stem. I mean simply 
that the church needs those who have seen the truth 
for themselves and made it their own, able to use the 
historic treasures of Western Christian thinking with- 


152 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

out being in bondage to their forms, able also to 
think out for themselves, in the language and 
thought forms of their own people, the eternal truths 
of the gospel. 

It follows that the church ought to enter as fully 
as it can into the service of the community through 
education, social service and medical work. To ex¬ 
press the Christian spirit to the life of the people it 
must enter as deeply as possible into it. It is, I hope, 
needless to say that this is not to be done only as a 
bait for evangelizing. Nothing could be more un¬ 
christian. Man’s life is a whole, not a piebald mix¬ 
ture of sacred and secular. It is as wrong to regard 
evangelistic work alone as spiritual as to do educa¬ 
tional or social work as though that were the sole aim 
of the church. The multiplication of active, intelli¬ 
gent, well ordered lives in a healthy community is 
among the fruits of the Spirit, and service directed to 
that end is one of the expressions of Christian devo¬ 
tion. It may, indeed, be found that so great misun¬ 
derstanding exists of the meaning and nature of the 
church that long years have to be spent in service 
along one or another avenue of approach to the life 
of the community before the people come to under¬ 
stand that the Christians desire only their good. 

Such service is a recognition of the solidarity of the 
church with the community. It must, nevertheless, 
just because it is rendered in the name of Christ, al¬ 
ways look beyond the present standards to better 
ones, in criticism, revision and reconstruction. We 
have, happily, multitudinous instances of this policy 
in practice. The rural school and teachers’ training 
institute that unite a deep regard for the life of the 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 153 

village with the best pedagogical knowledge avail¬ 
able ; the pioneering education for girls and women ; 
the large responsibility assumed by Christians for 
some of the most difficult aspects of physical service, 
such as the care of lepers, of the tuberculous, of the 
blind and deaf and dumb ,* the widespread adoption 
by Christian bodies of the method of rural cooper¬ 
ative credit—these are only a few of the ways in 
which the church is showing itself to be at one with 
the community while pointing beyond the stage to 
which the people of the land would unaided give 
their full assent. 

Is it recognized in the West how gigantic are these 
tasks that face the communities of Asia and Africa in 
which the Christian church is set ? This book is not 
written with any knowledge of African problems, 
but it is right to say here that this matter of the 
church’s aiding in the life of the community is more 
urgent and difficult in Africa than anywhere else in 
the world, save perhaps among the islands of the Pa¬ 
cific. Asia and Africa alike are subjected in these 
years to the tremendous strain of meeting and ab¬ 
sorbing the intellectual and economic influences that 
pour in from the West. It is no mere rhetoric to 
speak of a revolution. But the older Eastern peoples 
with their written culture have resisting power that 
the tribal African has not. It is impossible to main¬ 
tain the tribal society as it is ; it cannot but be 
changed, and the supreme question is whether it is 
to drift into chaos or whether ordered life shall be 
built up out of it. It is almost universally recognized 
that in this work the Christian church is indispen¬ 
sable, and on their side anthropologists have brought 


154 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

to the church, whenever it would listen to them, 
great new resources of wisdom. 

It may serve as a transition to the problems offered 
by the state if we stay for a moment to consider the 
relation of the church to nationalism, which is the 
expression of the spirit of the community especially 
in contact with forces that inhibit and limit it. 
Broadly, it seems to me that any church ought to be 
in sympathy with political national aspirations. A 
certain type of nationalism is a great evil in the mod¬ 
ern world, but the evil type is in the main shown by 
powers in the West which have become intoxicated 
with race or blood myths. In the East it is as yet only 
Japan that has the power to be aggressively national¬ 
ist as certain European powers are today. The main 
type of Eastern nationalism is the Indian, sensitively 
conscious of being subject to another people and 
striving to attain effective power within its own 
house, or the Turkish or Iranian, where nationalism 
is the vehicle of a resurgent national consciousness, 
invading every part of life and culture. Any Indian 
church, being made up of Indians, will normally sym¬ 
pathize with the national point of view in regard to 
constitutional reform and the attainment of freedom. 
Iranian Christians, as we have seen, including con¬ 
verts from Islam, hold themselves to be not less Ira¬ 
nian because they are Christian. 

Yet the same principles hold here as elsewhere. 
Because for Christians no society, not even the most 
perfect that we can conceive, ceases to be in need of 
redemption, they cannot enter blindly into a nation¬ 
alist movement nor forego the duty of criticizing it 
in the light of the ideal. 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 155 

The foreign missionary is in a different position. 
The concrete situations which arise are so different 
that it is useless to generalize. A foreign missionary 
in a country ruled by a foreign power different from 
his own has to be bound by the necessities of the case, 
which obviously include an abstinence from open 
indulgence in political activity. This applies, for 
example, to British in Korea or to Americans in In¬ 
dia. It is perfectly possible to show a sympathy with 
the objectives of a national movement without over¬ 
stepping the bounds which are proper to such a case. 
The foreign missionary whose nationality is the same 
as that of the dominant power is placed in a rather 
different situation. The fact that he is of the same 
people as the rulers will predispose him to agree with 
them and see things as they see them ; he will there¬ 
fore have to watch his actions with peculiar care lest 
he allow his national sympathy to estrange him from 
the Christians of the land with whom he is working. 
Because missionaries of other nationalities are pre¬ 
cluded from public statement it is the more incum¬ 
bent upon him not to be silent in the face of gross 
injustice. 

The foreign missionary working in the territory of 
an Asiatic power which is fully self-governing has no 
problem at this point, though he has others that are 
grave enough. 

While I suggest that nationalism in itself is a good 
thing, and that it has brought fresh life to many peo¬ 
ples in art, literature, science, philosophy, religion 
and many other spheres of activity, we must not 
allow ourselves to forget that nationalism in the mili¬ 
tant form can be as great a tyranny as any in the 


156 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

world. Here the question becomes the same as that 
of the church in relation to the authoritarian state, 
and to this we now turn. 

We have a double fact to consider in the state, 
just as we have in the church. On the one hand, it is 
agreed by Christian thinkers that the authority of the 
state has a divine sanction, and that it is therefore 
entitled to the obedience of its subjects, not merely 
because it can wield overwhelming force against the 
individual but because that obedience is its due. 
This does not apply only to a good government 
(which is, in any case, obviously a matter on which 
men may differ) and certainly not only to a Christian 
one. It is worth remembering, as the Archbishop of 
York reminds us, that St. Paul’s “ the powers that be 
are ordained of God ” was spoken of Nero ! Obedi¬ 
ence to established authority is the normally right 
attitude for the Christian, whether the authority is 
Christian or not, and whether he approves of it in 
all respects or not. 

On the other hand, society owes almost as much 
to the rebel as to the statesman. It would be alto¬ 
gether wrong so far to exalt the principle of normal 
obedience to established authority as to obscure the 
place of conscience. This is not the place to attempt 
even a statement, much less an exposition, of the re¬ 
lation between conscience and the state ; but it may 
be said in a word that because the principle holds 
that all human societies need to be redeemed, the 
Christian man must hold in a kind of tension the 
obedience he owes to constituted authority and the 
testimony he must give to the higher order of things. 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 157 

But it must be conscience (not only his own but his 
own taught by that of the Christian community) that 
he obeys, and he must never take the name of God in 
vain, as he will do if he withstands in the name of 
Christian faithfulness measures to which his real ob¬ 
jection is political or economic, or of some other le¬ 
gitimate but wholly mundane kind. I do not suggest 
that there is no place for rebellion in the name of 
other kinds of convictions—far from it; but if we are 
thinking of the church in its relation to the state, it is 
only a profoundly conscientious objection to some¬ 
thing which offends the Christian conscience that the 
church can sustain on Christian grounds. 

If we take this stand, we are free from a danger 
which has sometimes beset the church in its relations 
with the state. The reason for the church’s opposi¬ 
tion should never be envy or jealousy of the state, as 
though it were anxious to preserve its own prestige. 
Once the church begins to fight with weapons of that 
kind its hopes are gone. Its ground of action lies in 
those great truths to which it owes its existence. The 
gravity of the situation in which the church finds 
itself today in more than one land lies in the fact 
that the state is denying the truth about the nature 
of life and of mankind and trying to impose a false 
orthodoxy of its own. If it is true, as we have said, 
that man is essentially one to whom God speaks, the 
child of God intended to find himself in the world as 
a fellow with others in doing the will of God, then it 
is not true that there is no call upon him higher than 
that of his nation, or that he is the result of the eco¬ 
nomic interplay of forces, or that he is what his race 
and blood are and no more. The church needs not 


158 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

to organize opposition on such matters; its very ex¬ 
istence and the fellowship and interior life which it 
enjoys are hostile to all such subpersonal or merely 
biological views of man. 

Moreover, the church is a universal society. It 
should, as we have seen, be a home for all men in 
every land, but if it ever yields to national pride so 
much as to lose its sense of the universal Christian 
fellowship, it has lost its savor. It is in actual 
fact one of the outstanding facts about the younger 
churches in the East today that they are in touch with 
the rest of the world, and that through missionary 
connection and such events as the Indian Mission of 
Fellowship to Great Britain they are coming to feel 
themselves a part of a world fellowship. No one 
could be present at the Jerusalem meeting of the In¬ 
ternational Missionary Council in 1928 and not real¬ 
ize this fact with an unforgettable vividness. But this 
is not what is desired by some of those who in pow¬ 
erful places are trying to remold the thinking of the 
nations. A national church—one fully sympathetic 
to the national viewpoint and appreciative of the 
national destiny—yes ; but this corrected by a uni¬ 
versal fellowship and by actual contact with religious 
helpers from other nations—emphatically no. 

Where does the menace lie and where are difficul¬ 
ties most likely to break out ? If it is the very exist¬ 
ence of the church that is an offence it will be 
denounced either as unpatriotic (by the absolute 
racial or national state) or as the peddler of opiate 
to the people (by the communist absolutism). These 
are extremes, but there are certain concrete difficul- 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE 159 

ties already being met in the spheres of evangelism 
and of education. 

I have written something about the conversion 
problem as it arises in the Near East. It can hardly 
be said that at the worst in these countries conversion 
is prohibited. Its legal recognition is impeded by the 
Sharia law, and the fact of it is strenuously opposed 
both by Moslem orthodox sentiment and by (some) 
nationalism. (I am not here including Arabia or 
Afghanistan in which, I imagine, conversion openly 
professed is not possible save on pain of death.) But 
it is quite possible that in one of a number of states 
organized converting activity might be prohibited. 
It has actually been proposed by the editor of the 
Indian Social Reformer of Bombay that proselytism 
shall be forbidden by law and the king-emperor de¬ 
clared protector of all the religions of India. It can¬ 
not in my judgment be deemed absurd to suggest that 
such measures might be passed in several of the Near 
East countries, and we live in a world of such incal¬ 
culable change that the same kind of action might be 
taken elsewhere. If that happened, it would throw 
the weight of Christian work more than ever upon 
the indigenous church. It cannot perhaps be claimed 
as a Christian necessity that Americans or British 
shall preach the Christian gospel in Iran, for instance, 
but it is a Christian duty for Iranian Christians to 
witness to it in their own way and in their own land. 
The state can never prevent Christian witness, 
though it may make it dangerous to the last degree 
and may surround the act of conversion and baptism 
with legal penalties (loss of property, marriage diffi- 


l6o CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

culties and the like) so grave as to render it nearly 
impossible. 

Christian education is at the moment the type of 
work most generally endangered by state pressure. 
This pressure is found even where, as in China, there 
is genuine friendliness to Christian activity on the 
part of government. To prohibit the teaching of re¬ 
ligion in registered private schools of the elementary 
grade seems to me to be a real interference with the 
liberty of the subject, but this is the law in China. 
In Japan the registered school of every grade is sub¬ 
ject to the same disability. The obstacle is sur¬ 
mounted by the use of non-school buildings and 
organized employment of leisure time, both of which 
are well within the law. Missionary schools in Tur¬ 
key and in Iran have been hindered by laws which 
insist that only nationals of the country shall conduct 
schools of certain grades. In Korea there is obviously 
a determination not to permit foreign schools unless 
they will accept shrine worship, and the ultra¬ 
nationalist policy of Japan must make the future of 
the Christian school under foreign heads, or employ¬ 
ing foreigners, somewhat uncertain. (I was asked in 
Korea whether the meeting of the International Mis¬ 
sionary Council to be held in China in 1938 would 
consider the question : “ What is the substitute for 
Christian education ? ” I think this meant that for 
some missionaries it had become at least an open 
question whether Christian education in any real 
sense of the word could go on. In that case, was 
there any other form of work that might carry some 
of the same values ?) 

What policy can we follow in such emergencies ? 


CHURCH, COMMUNITY AND STATE l6l 

I believe that there is no short and easy answer to 
this question, and that in the present era of mission¬ 
ary work there are few questions that so much de¬ 
mand corporate study. I make two suggestions only. 
The first is that we should avoid every justifiable oc¬ 
casion of offense, and be studiously careful not to ask 
for privileges as if they were rights to which con¬ 
science compelled us to cling. By occasions of 
offense I mean such things as the maintenance of 
schools that have no real educational value and are 
in reality preaching stations. (It is said by those who 
should know that what lies behind the present Chi¬ 
nese policy is the intention of forcing schools to have 
a real educational purpose.) It goes without saying 
that proselytism in the sense in which our Lord uses 
the word should be sedulously avoided. Again, if 
Christian schools and influence are thought to be de¬ 
nationalizing—a frequent charge—the first thing to 
be done is to examine ourselves and see how far the 
allegation is true. Or again, the old days of the 
dominance of the West in the East have gone, but it 
is still difficult for some of us to get rid of the idea 
that foreign missions should have special privileges. 
Whether we think it wise or not is beside the point ,* 
it is entirely justifiable for a state to insist on its own 
rules as to vernacular, or the local government of 
schools, or the foreign holding of property for mis¬ 
sionary purposes. If necessary it is always possible to 
remonstrate and urge a wiser course, but there is a 
difference between this and conscientious objection. 

The other line of answer is far more fundamental. 
In the last resort the only weapon that the Christian 
church has is its own quality of life, its purity and 


162 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

humility and dependence upon God, the dynamic 
spiritual power which he gives it. The basic de¬ 
mands of the Christian discipleship are perhaps 
these : worship, witness, the Christian teaching of 
children. Legal difficulties may hamper but they can 
be surmounted if there is the zeal to do so. But it 
can never be right to give up worship at the call of 
the state, or to give up witness (though methods may 
have to change), or to fail to teach one’s children 
what the life in Christ is. And it can never be right 
to worship false gods, not though all the powers of 
the state call upon us. 

Therefore, the key to the problem of the state and 
its pressure upon the church is finally to be found in 
the deepening of the life of the church. It is fatally 
easy to become so engrossed in the detailed work of 
securing legal toleration for Christian activity as to 
lose that dynamic redeeming power which is the final 
charter of the Christian society in the world. The 
ultima ratio on which the church in all ages has fallen 
back is martyrdom, and in our day there are more 
Christians in both East and West who are thinking 
and talking in these terms than there have been for 
many generations. But martyrdom is, as the word 
signifies, witness, and there is no witness except out 
of the depth of life. There is nothing for which the 
prayers of the universal church are so greatly needed 
as that there should be deepened and strengthened in 
the younger churches, faced by so great difficulties 
and with so slender resources of their own, the au¬ 
thentic life of the Spirit. 


VII 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE 
CHURCH 

W E MUST turn now from this somewhat gen¬ 
eral consideration of the fundamental ground 
on which the Christian church stands, and its rela¬ 
tion to the world order within which it is set, to the 
questions which inhere in its own life and witness. 
In a book of this size it is impossible to argue thor¬ 
oughly the innumerable points of principle which 
arise, and I hope that what I have said in the two 
preceding chapters will make it plain why I do not 
believe in the permanence or value of a 41 Christian 
movement ” apart from an enduring Christian so¬ 
ciety. The Christian religion is concerned not 
merely with the promulgation of ideals but with a 
life lived in response to the historic revelation of the 
eternal God. Everything depends, under God, upon 
the quality of life manifested by those who have been 
called together into the fellowship of the church, not 
by their common disposition but by the miracle of 
redemption and the obedience which it demands. 
The church is rooted far back in God’s promise to 
Abraham, but in the long discipline of the chosen 
people—chosen, unlike the nationally elect of the 
modern world, in order that they might suffer and by 
suffering be purified—it has been freed from every- 
163 


164 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

thing that is local, racial or partisan. To these great 
standards it can always be recalled. 

“ Life ” and “ witness ”—the two must go to¬ 
gether. Those of us who emphasize the primacy of 
the church in missionary policy are sometimes told 
that we exalt the welfare of an institution and forget 
the manifold diversity of life. But it is obvious that 
so soon as the church becomes a static and self- 
regarding society it has to that extent ceased to be the 
church of Christ. Called into being by the divine 
love, it has no life apart from its witness to that love. 
It is in the world, and so long as time shall last it will 
partake of the infirmity of human things, but it exists 
to bear witness to the redeeming purpose of God and 
in a measure to be the vehicle of that purpose. 

I have tried in my earlier chapters to paint a pic¬ 
ture in which there are not only deep shadows—and 
they are deep indeed—but also brilliant lights. It is, 
I believe, the truth of the world situation that faces 
us as Christians today that there is both increasing 
menace from the secular order and abundant evi¬ 
dence of the outpouring of the Spirit. The advance 
of the Christian forces is to be prompted not by 
the human spirit of bravado, crying “ Toujours 
Vaudace! ” as it assails its foes, but by obedience to 
the divine leading. It is the plain fact that God is 
so leading the church, and it is through his working 
in the hearts of men that there is today throughout 
the church in these great lands of the East an absorp¬ 
tion and commitment to the task of evangelistic wit¬ 
ness that has not always been present either in them 
or in the churches of the West. 

Something has been said already of the evangelistic 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 165 

movements now on foot in India, China and Japan. 
The “ Kingdom of God ” movement in Japan came 
to an end in its organized form, and has now been 
succeeded by another nation-wide movement in 
which all the non-Roman churches are united. The 
earlier movement owed its chief impetus to the 
genius of Toyohiko Kagawa, and bore the impress of 
his spirit in its twin emphasis upon personal evan¬ 
gelism and the establishment of cooperative socie¬ 
ties 1 as a necessary part of the Christian witness in 
life. The present movement is more firmly based 
upon the conscious cooperation of the different 
Christian bodies ; it is not quite clear how far it is 
committed to the necessity of Christian action in the 
social sphere as an essential part of the Christian 
witness. 

In China, the five year movement launched in 1930 
has completed its first phase and has been renewed 
for another five year period. To double the Chris¬ 
tian church membership in China was the original 
objective—though it would be misleading to write as 
though a severely numerical goal described the aims 
of such leaders as Dr. Cheng Ching-yi. The move¬ 
ment was carried through at a time when every kind 
of difficulty faced both nation and church—flood, 
famine, foreign invasion, internal confusion—and 
any body of Christians in the world might have been 
excused had they conceived their duty as being only 
to “ dig themselves in ” and wait for kindlier days. 
In fact, the movement saved the church from the 
spirit of defeat, and led to deeper life and consecra¬ 
tion within its ranks. Of all its features none is more 
1 0n the Kagawa cooperatives see Chap. VIH. 


l66 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

interesting to the student from without than the 
stress laid upon Christianizing the home. In the re¬ 
newed movement especial attention is being given to 
the all-important problem of providing adequate 
Christian training for voluntary lay workers, and to 
this we shall return. 

The Indian churches are faced, as we have seen, 
with a series of movements, particularly among the 
depressed classes, which in the coming days will tax 
to the full all the resources that they can muster. To 
add another concrete instance to those already 
quoted, the (English) Methodist Church in Dhara- 
puram, near Coimbatore, has seen a group of Chris¬ 
tians which after ninety years of work numbered in 
the year 1912 just over 2000 and appeared completely 
stationary, begin suddenly to grow until in 1934 it 
had reached almost 24,000, though there were actu¬ 
ally fewer missionaries in the station in that year 
than during the twenty years before and an appro¬ 
priation of barely twice as much money from the 
mission as at the earlier date. The forward evange¬ 
listic movement begun in 1935 by the National Chris¬ 
tian Council is not a series of isolated efforts and 
temporary though spectacular “ drives,” but a steady 
advance throughout the mass of the churches, such as 
alone can meet the innumerable opportunities af¬ 
forded by India today. 

I think it is not too much to say that in all these 
instances there is one principle universally accepted. 
It is that the primary instrument of evangelism is the 
witness of the church itself. I do not except the Mos¬ 
lem lands of the Near East, for though the church life 
in these lands is totally different in its background 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 167 

and conditions from that of the Far East, there is the 
same recognition as in India, China and Japan that it 
is on the witness of the church, whether the newer 
communities of converts or the ancient churches, 
that the future hangs. 

What, in practice, does this mean ? I can give no 
better illustration than by quoting the letter of coun¬ 
sel recently sent to the missions and churches of India 
by the little group who advise the National Christian 
Council on evangelism. The salient points of this 
letter are the primacy of personal witness ; the ne¬ 
cessity of showing practical sympathy with the un¬ 
touchables in their distress and extending a friendly 
welcome to all who seek the succor of the Christian 
faith ; the importance of simple united Christian 
worship from the very beginning as an uplifting and 
liberating influence ; the need for providing resident 
Christian teachers where the spirit of inquiry is 
abroad and giving such instruction as will lead new 
disciples into a gradual understanding and appre¬ 
hension of the essential Christian doctrines; the 
larger employment of voluntary workers ; the greater 
use of training schools for inquirers ; the overcoming 
of illiteracy ; and the practice, above all, of united 
and continual prayer. 

Too much emphasis can hardly be given to the 
place of worship in the life of the church. It is 
among the most interesting and valuable points in 
Bishop Pickett’s survey of mass movement work that 
he insists upon the value of worship, and of liturgical 
worship, for the untouchable converts as the most 
powerful means of teaching them the inner meaning 
of the Christian religion. Worship is from the hu- 


l68 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

man side the completest exercise of the personality : 
worship is more than knowledge, though Christian 
worship must be intelligent worship. The worship 
of God, deep and simple, is both the life-blood of the 
young churches that are growing up so rapidly among 
masses of unlettered people and also a means of wit¬ 
ness that is unsurpassed. 

Of personal witness by unpaid lay workers of the 
rank and file there is already a volume that would 
put to shame almost any Christian body in the West. 
It was one of the features of the “ Kingdom of God ” 
movement in Japan that great numbers of laymen 
took part. In India the new evangelistic movement 
is everywhere enlisting the witness of the lay mem¬ 
bers. In one effort in western India it is said that 
“ all who could sing and walk took part.” The 
Bishop of Dornakal recently reported that in a period 
of concentration upon evangelistic witness more than 
half of the communicant membership of the diocese 
actually engaged in some form of personal evange¬ 
lism. Young men from the churches in south Travan- 
core spent their holidays in traveling among the 
Ezhava communities to tell them what they knew 
of the grace of God. A missionary writing from the 
midst of the Bhil people, aborigines in central and 
western India among whom there is a great move¬ 
ment toward Christ, says that it is a characteristic of 
those who have been converted that they are eager 
to carry their message among the villages, and that in 
consequence one of the main problems now facing 
the mission is “ the constantly increasing number of 
those who have received the gospel in this way from 
poorly equipped though intensely earnest followers 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 169 

of Christ, and their insistent demands for further and 
more effective teaching.” 2 

This brings us to the question of training and edu¬ 
cation. It is an immense subject and we can do no 
more than indicate some of its facets. Clearly, move¬ 
ments of the size now being faced in India and per¬ 
haps soon to be faced elsewhere require nothing less 
than a vast offering of voluntary witness, and it is one 
of the principal tasks now upon us to provide simple 
and adequate training for those who will be, to such 
extent as their condition allows, voluntary workers. 
The recent study made in China, under the leader¬ 
ship of Dean Weigle of Yale, of the whole provision 
of training for Christian service in China laid much 
emphasis upon this problem, and the methods now 
being followed by the National Christian Council of 
China in fostering simple and effective religious edu¬ 
cation among Christians for the purpose of fitting 
them for this work of witness is of the highest im¬ 
portance, not only to China but to other countries 
also. 

But the greater the army of such workers, the greater 
the need for the training of the abler leaders. Here 
we touch the question of theological training, one of 
the most difficult and important in all missionary 
work. For reasons that are obvious, the forces of 
tradition are unusually powerful here, and the theo¬ 
logical seminaries and colleges are not always attuned 
to the urgent needs of the day. Denominational loy¬ 
alties have resulted in the establishment of too many 
weakly staffed institutions ; it follows inevitably that 
they are too often conventionally modeled on a West- 
2 Dr. F. H. Russell in N.C.C. Review, July, 1936. 


170 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

ern pattern, for only the strong staff has the ability 
and courage to experiment; they are sometimes slow 
in adapting themselves to the actual, urgent and 
changing needs of the times. There are, of course, 
splendid instances to the contrary, but the strongly 
marked traditionalism which distinguishes theologi¬ 
cal education in the West is accentuated in the East 
by the causes I have mentioned. It is of little use to 
generalize, but at least we can say that there is need 
for the best possible training that the Christian world 
affords to be given to those who are to be the leaders 
of the younger churches. It is in vain to talk of the 
“ decrease ” of the missionary and the “ increase ” of 
the indigenous leader unless the best training is 
given, for responsibility inevitably goes where there 
is ability to shoulder it. There is no greater need in 
the Christian life of the East than for an increase in 
the number of those who have thought deeply upon 
the meaning of the gospel, have seen its relevance to 
the historic culture of their peoples, have mastered 
traditional Christian thinking so that they are not 
slavishly bound by it but can use it with a true free¬ 
dom, and are thus enabled to lead in the great work 
of setting forth the truth among the varied and chang¬ 
ing thought forms of the Eastern world. I do not 
believe that anything like this will be achieved with¬ 
out a considerably greater amount of unified action 
than is now in sight. 

But specifically, religious teaching is only a part of 
the wider work of Christian education. It is plain, 
as we look at the circumstances now prevailing in 
a number of the Eastern countries, that the share to 
be taken by Christian institutions in general educa- 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 171 

tion has been reduced and is likely to be further re¬ 
duced, if not banished altogether in some countries. 
I am sure that Christian bodies should cling to a share 
in this work as long as they can. They should, of 
course, maintain only schools and colleges which are 
of first-rate quality, not merely in academic standing 
but in personal influence and in alertness, to meet the 
needs of the people. If the best that can be said of a 
Christian school or college is that it is doing the same 
sort of thing as schools or colleges conducted by gov¬ 
ernment or private agency, and doing it about as well, 
it is at least doubtful whether this is a right use of 
man power. But granted this principle, the case for 
taking a share in general education is surely very 
strong. There are many ways of evangelism, and a 
good school or college can be among the most ef¬ 
fective. It can show by the strength of corporate life 
what the Christian way is. It can prepare the mind 
for the truth . The message of Christianity is to be 
interpreted to men and women who are not without 
their own preconceptions and convictions and have 
been brought up to certain ideas of life which may 
be, and often are, in themselves barriers to the gospel. 
Not only the specific teaching of Christianity, but the 
teaching of science, or literature, or history, 8 can be 
used as a preparation for the gospel, because by their 
aid wrong views of God and the world can be eradi¬ 
cated and the way made plain—so far as intellectually 
it can be made plain—for the truth. 

But it will be mainly with Christians, as the years 
go on, that Christian education is concerned, and the 

3 See Christian Higher Education in India (Lindsay report), pp. 
148 ff. 


172 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

need and scope are gigantic. I have written else¬ 
where of the importance of abolishing illiteracy, 
which is within the power of educational agencies if 
they are properly used and supported. Even within 
the Christian community there is a great need for the 
removal of illiteracy, and as the crowds of illiterates 
pour into the church the need grows ever greater. 
We are altogether too complacent in this matter. In 
certain parts of India the proportion of literacy 
among Christians is actually decreasing, even though 
no great ingathering of new converts has taken place. 
Not nearly enough use is being made of the invalu¬ 
able insight already obtained into method ; it is hu¬ 
miliating to find secular educators sometimes more 
appreciative of the best Christian pioneering efforts 
in education than many Christian missionaries. 

We need a new spirit of resolution in this matter. 
Recent years have seen almost every aspect of Chris¬ 
tian education in the East examined by able investi¬ 
gators—colleges, schools, rural training—but there is 
too little corresponding zeal in action. In the educa¬ 
tion of women and girls and in the field of rural edu¬ 
cational experiment the Christian bodies are as truly 
pioneers today as were Carey and Duff when they 
began to use the educational method. Too much 
middle and high school and college education has 
yielded to the immensely powerful conventionalism 
of government systems ; a way out can be found and 
in many cases has been marked out, but only a vigor¬ 
ous corporate policy, deeply fraught with a sense of 
the responsibility of Christian education in the world 
today, will enable these ways to be chosen. 

I do not wish to write unfairly of government and 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 173 

other available types of school and college ; in India, 
China and Japan alike it is now true that the best 
government institutions are academically superior to 
most of the Christian ones. (In Japan there is no 
comparison, for the imperial universities are acknowl¬ 
edged to be on a level of their own.) But I am con¬ 
vinced that a truly Christian education is something 
that only Christian educators can give, and that to 
allow the youth of the growing churches to receive 
their insights into the meaning of life mainly or only 
from those who either accept the new paganisms or 
are uneasily loyal to the old, is to weaken the church 
of the future and to jeopardize its distinctive Chris¬ 
tian witness. 

In saying this I do not dispute the fact that the 
Christian, or at least the missionary, institutions may 
be driven not only from general education but even 
from the education of Christians. I offer this argu¬ 
ment not to those who are faced with dire necessity, 
but to those who think that education is a part of 
the total labor of the church which may be treated as 
relatively unimportant. They are, I believe, tacitly 
arguing from conditions in the West where there is, 
to put it at the lowest, a Christian tradition. 

But we have been thinking only of evangelistic 
work and of education. It is, I hope, plain from all 
that has been said that there is not one single type of 
evangelistic work, but a Christian body reaching out 
in manifold ways to those around, and using every 
human association as a vehicle of the good news. 
The changing times in which we live demand a great 
alertness of spirit in this matter. Perhaps we have 
grown too well used to a tripartite division into evan- 


174 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

gelists, educators and medicals. The evangelist has to 
use educational methods ; the educator is an evange¬ 
list using his own proper instrument; the physician 
alone of them all has the power to convey a spirit of 
love and compassion almost without words, but who 
can be more of an evangelist than he ? The newer 
plans for rural reconstruction, to which we shall 
come later, offer countless ways of making plain what 
is the message and gift of Christ. 

One of the most remarkable of the newer methods 
is that of newspaper evangelism—the insertion in the 
ordinary secular press of articles expounding the 
Christian faith. It was first used in Japan, as is to be 
expected in a literate country where newspapers have 
gigantic circulations. In that country the method 
has been conspicuously successful in arousing inter¬ 
est, which in many cases has led on to definite instruc¬ 
tion and conversion. It has now been begun in India 
and China, and is being used in the Near East 
through the medium of Turkish and Arabic. 

In what has been said in this chapter there has 
been perhaps a somewhat confused use of the words 
“ missions ” and “churches,’’ and it is time to say 
something on this point. For some of the chief ec¬ 
clesiastical traditions there is, formally at least, no 
problem. The Anglican Church organizes dioceses 
in the Eastern countries and anticipates the gradual 
disappearance of the mission organization in the 
field, all the work being controlled by the diocese. 
This has come to pass in Japan and China to a large 
extent, and also in parts of India. The Methodist 
churches of both England and the United States fol¬ 
low a similar principle. It is still possible that within 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 1 75 

the unified church organization on the field there 
may be a predominance of missionary influence, but 
the missionaries are there as members of the church 
and it is in every case only a question of time before 
the control is actually in the hands of the Christians 
of the land. Other types of organization, however, 
exist. The bulk of the Presbyterian, Congregation- 
alist and Baptist missions have side by side a mission 
and a church, and two main types of policy arise from 
this fact. Certain bodies, mainly Congregationalist 
and Baptist, have virtually merged the mission in the 
church, leaving perhaps some committee concerned 
only with the personal affairs of the missionaries. 
Others, chiefly Presbyterian, have maintained the two 
bodies in separation but have aimed at passing over 
control of ever increasing areas of work to the in¬ 
digenous church, or to committees jointly representa¬ 
tive of both church and mission. The methods in 
use relate to different types of ecclesiastical organiza¬ 
tion and need not be discussed here. 

What underlies this tangled and somewhat tedious 
question is the fact that unless there is a satisfactory 
solution of the relationship of the foreign missionary 
and the indigenous church leader the maximum of 
harm can be done to the church and to its life and 
witness. It is far from being merely a technical ques¬ 
tion. Nothing has more irked the sensitive mission¬ 
ary in every country than to be paymaster of those 
with whom he must work in the common task, but 
this stage still has not been passed in, I suppose, the 
greater number of cases, and cannot be passed unless 
a certain grade of ability has arisen among the indig¬ 
enous leaders. Again, if evangelistic work is initiated 


176 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

by the mission and thought to be the job of the mis¬ 
sion, while the church is concerned with the pastoral 
care of those who are already Christians, a vicious 
dichotomy is set up ; evangelism is thought to depend 
upon the amount of money the mission board can 
spend upon evangelists, and the church, upon whose 
own witness everything really depends, is thought to 
have no concern with it. Ideas such as these have 
been distressingly common and it is only by a whole¬ 
hearted emphasis upon the true meaning and func¬ 
tion of the church that they can be eradicated. 

Then there is the whole complex of more personal 
questions, gathering around the relationships of the 
workers, indigenous and foreign. So much has been 
said on this question that I do not wish to write of it 
at length. But I would make two observations. The 
first is that the question is a real question, based upon 
a real difficulty, and that those who make light of it 
are almost certainly themselves guilty of some of the 
subtler forms of self-deceit. The missionary move¬ 
ment in the modern world differs radically from the 
methods whereby the Christian religion was propa¬ 
gated in, let us say, the Roman Empire, in that the 
initiative has been taken by people from countries 
totally different in their culture and their economic 
standards from those to which they went, and, in the 
case of the predominantly north European and 
American Protestant missionaries, possessed of a ra¬ 
cial habit of initiative and love of creative control. 
They have, in short, been quite extraordinarily dif¬ 
ferent from those to whom they went. So long as 
the paternal relationship subsists (and in a good 
deal of the world it subsists still, and rightly so) the 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 177 

problem hardly arises, though even in fathers good 
manners are not amiss. But all through the East 
even where there are masses of illiterate converts 
there are also leaders of conscious power, and there is 
a national background impatient of Western self- 
assertion and political or economic dominance. The 
modern task confronting the total Christian forces 
is to be essayed by a kind of double body, so far at 
least as the greater part of the East and Africa is con¬ 
cerned. The larger partner numerically (and more 
and more in every other way) must be the church of 
each land. The other partner is the church, or 
churches, of the West, working through missionary 
organizations and represented personally in myriads 
of intimate contacts by those who are called mission¬ 
aries. There is the further fact, differentiating the 
Christian problem from that of colonial governments 
and the like, that a certain amount of the total money 
needed is provided by the Western churches. Obvi¬ 
ously there is here a situation fraught with difficulty, 
and it is merely sentimental to pretend that there is 
none. But the difficulty must be surmounted, for un¬ 
less the total force can advance to its task with the 
sense of a united life burning within it, it cannot 
expect to do the work of God in the world. So long 
as the indigenous worker feels that the real responsi¬ 
bility lies with the foreigner and that he is employed 
as an agent in a task whose burden lies upon another, 
he cannot be a witness ; he can be only, what he is still 
sometimes called, an “ agent.” Conversely, it is pos¬ 
sible for the self-government within the church to go 
so far that the place of the missionary, though he is 
in general wanted and valued, is insufficiently clear, 


178 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

and men and women are left wondering just why 
they came and whether they ought to stay. 

The other observation I would offer is that I found 
much ground to doubt whether we of the West are as 
far along the road to success in solving this problem 
as we usually think. I must say candidly that the 
conditions of the problem are far more difficult in 
countries still subject in greater or less measure to a 
foreign power. Japan and China are quite different 
from India or Java. I confess to being surprised to 
find how many Indian Christians spoke to me some¬ 
what bitterly on the subject; I had thought that the 
large advance in devolution of authority to Indian 
church bodies had largely removed what had been a 
widely felt grievance. But even after discounting a 
good deal of personal feeling aroused by untypical 
cases, I found it impossible to rid myself of the un¬ 
happy sense that there was less unity of spirit between 
the two parties than most of us Europeans and Amer¬ 
icans are wont to claim, and in such affairs it is es¬ 
sential that not only oneself should be sure that all is 
well, but the other man also ! It is right to add that 
the conditions of a non-self-governing country offer 
special temptations to those of the same race as the 
rulers. Most British and American missionaries in 
India, and most Dutch ones in Java, would find the 
conditions in Japan a great surprise, as I did. I 
found myself reflecting that without doubt I had 
been unconsciously irritating and wounding my In¬ 
dian friends during the years of my service in India, 
though I should probably have been annoyed if I had 
been told so. 

This book is not intended to be a general treatise 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 179 

on missionary work, but there is one problem in this 
foreign-native connection which I ought to mention, 
as it is both typical of the difficulties which have to 
be faced, and is in itself very difficult to decide. One 
would say that among the first things for which a 
growing church should be responsible is the support 
of its own ministry, and that for the foreign sources to 
provide pastoral care for the local congregations is to 
prevent them from growing. But, as several Chinese 
pastors said to me at different times : “You people 
ask us to do two things which are mutually incom¬ 
patible. You tell us that the church ought to be led 
by the best trained ministry obtainable, and you tell 
us also that we must be self-supporting. We can’t 
manage both.” Actually there is, all over the East, a 
striking and notorious disparity between the salary 
which a man or woman can expect to receive in edu¬ 
cational or medical work within the service of Chris¬ 
tian bodies, and that of the minister or evangelist. 
The disparity is far greater than in the West. Stand¬ 
ards are set by education or medicine generally, there 
are government grants—the reasons are obvious but 
the difficulty remains. Now, if a mission follows, let 
us say, the Nevius 4 method (insisting on immediate 
self-support of each congregation and spending 
money only on the missionary and his personal secre¬ 
tary) there is the danger that the actual ordained 
leadership of the church may comprise almost no one 
of the caliber of the educational and medical 
workers. Accordingly there are many (of whom I 
am one) who feel that it is possible to press a theory 

4 See the International Review of Missions, April 1935, “ The Nevius 
Methods,” by Dr. C. A. Clark. 


l 80 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

so far as to do harm, and that it is not an improper 
use of missionary funds to make possible the appoint¬ 
ment on modest but reasonable salary of a certain 
number of men of outstanding quality, provided that 
they are not regarded as mission appointed men and 
thus of a higher grade—for such regard can only de¬ 
preciate the church’s own estimation of itself—and 
that the whole matter is carried out within the total 
church scheme. 

There remain two matters on which something 
should be said : the unity of the church and the chal¬ 
lenge to the principle of evangelism represented by 
the accusation of proselytism, and the more or less 
syncretistic theories which usually accompany it. 

Of the unity of the church what can I say but that 
we are most of us still shamefully complaisant in the 
face of a denial of what we profess ? Let it be ad¬ 
mitted—not grudgingly, but with full conviction— 
that the historic breaches in the unity of the church 
of Christ have had their meaning and their necessity. 
I at least am not among those who apologize for the 
Reformation, and though I would not cross the road 
to convert a man to Presbyterianism I shall continue 
a Presbyterian until I know that the values for which 
it stands are conserved in a wider unity. And let it 
be admitted further that it is not only the Western 
Christians but the Christians of the younger churches 
(and some of the ancient ones like the Syrians of 
Malabar) who know how to invent and to love 
division. 

Can it be denied, when all this has been said, 
that the major part of the responsibility for the di¬ 
vided state of the church in the East lies with us who 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH l8l 

have not only taken our divisions there—for that per¬ 
haps could not have been avoided—but have been 
culpably slow in recognizing that the persistence of 
divisions whose historical meaning is, at least in many 
cases, irrelevant to the Eastern lands is a menace to 
the life of the church ? Not many missionaries 
would deny this, and they have done their share man¬ 
fully in the labor for reunion. But there are pillars 
of the church in the Western lands who see so clearly 
the value of what they and their fathers have stood 
for that they can see little else, and who are not 
ashamed to bring pressure on the younger churches 
in favor of their own loyalties. It is perhaps only a 
minor point that there can be no truly indigenous 
church so long as the foreign names with their alien 
history persist, though some part of the reason for the 
large number of Christians in the East, notably in 
China, who pay no regard to the church at all, must 
be found here. The deep tragedy lies in the fact 
that in a day of the Lord when, in the face of all the 
powers of earth and hell, the gospel witness is to be 
proclaimed, we offer a divided fellowship. I shall 
not forget the day when I sat with a group of Chris¬ 
tians, drawn from the four principal churches (ex¬ 
cluding that of Rome) in Travancore, discussing and 
praying over the great turning to Christ among the 
Ezhavas. One aged Syrian priest said to me that if 
his church, with all its thousand and more years of 
history, should fail through conservative prejudice 
to welcome these newcomers, the judgment of God 
ought to fall upon it. But—one could never forget 
that to those who in the community of a Hindu 
loyalty were united we were offering four churches. 


182 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

Close cooperation and all such work as that of the 
National Christian councils can do much to mitigate 
the evils of division, but, as one who spends his days 
in promoting such cooperation, I would say without 
a shadow of hesitation that it is not a substitute for 
the united church of Christ. 

If they ask us, “ Is Christ divided ? ” must we say, 
“ Well, yes and no ” ? 

The other matter is not less fundamental. It is put 
most clearly by Mr. Gandhi, who holds that as in 
clothes and food and customs, so in religion, a man 
should hold by the stuff of his own people— swadeshi. 
He deeply resents, in spite of his personal friendliness 
to Christian missionaries, the fact that they will not 
be content to teach and heal but will also “ prose¬ 
lytize.” The value of the work, in his judgment, is 
destroyed ; it is not disinterested, as the Bhagavad 
Gita tells us our actions should be. That is one as¬ 
pect of the problem, the practical one. On the other 
hand, we have the type of religious thinking, ulti¬ 
mately rooted in a monistic view of reality, for which 
the future holds a synthesis of the world’s faiths, and 
which therefore looks on “ conversion ” and “ evan¬ 
gelism ” as belonging to a conservative and slightly 
illiterate world. These ideas have an appeal, apart 
from their intrinsic worth, to some of the most sen¬ 
sitive spirits in the missionary movement, who hate 
the very thought of aggressiveness and superiority. 

But the answer is surely very clear and simple. 
No Christian offers teaching or medical help as a 
bait so that the evangelistic hook may be swallowed. 
It is an expression of the love and compassion of 
Christ, and it is a part of that lifting up of the Son of 


THE LIFE AND WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 183 

Man which is to be until the end of time. But nei¬ 
ther does he offer the Christian gospel as something 
which connotes his own superiority. He does not 
say, “ Copy my superior culture . 0 He says, “ Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for you.” 
We cannot better St. Paul, in his missionary charter, 
“We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus our Lord, 
and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.” 

I do not for a moment deny that we should do well 
to study the charges made against the missionary 
movement—that it cares too much for numbers and 
that it uses unfair methods, that it is apathetic to na¬ 
tional culture, or that its massive organization sug¬ 
gests the waging of a military campaign. But I 
contend that there is in the very heart of the Chris¬ 
tian gospel that which will always give rise to the 
witness of evangelism, for if you believe with all your 
heart and mind that the Son of God loved you and 
gave himself for you and for all mankind with an 
undistinguishing regard, who are you that you should 
be silent on such a matter ? 


VIII 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 
HROUGHOUT the whole of the East the ques- 



JL tion presses home upon the Christian church 
and is echoed most earnestly by the younger genera¬ 
tion : " What is the Christian message for the social 
order ? In the face of the social need around us, 
what ought the church, what ought Christians, to 


do?” 


We turn now to what is not the least perplexing of 
the problems discussed in this book. The difficulties 
to be faced are of three kinds. In the first place, 
there is going on all over the Eastern countries (as in 
Africa) a profound social change which affects every 
part of life. In the second place, the Christian 
church is very small in relation to the immensity of 
the tasks that have to be faced. In the third place, 
much of the needed action must be taken, and can 
only be taken, by governments, and is entirely be¬ 
yond the reach of private bodies, even if they were 
far more powerful than the church can claim to be 
anywhere in the East. 

Perhaps it may be well to begin by dispelling a 
still common illusion, namely, that the linking of the 
life of the East with that of the West through the 
extension of a common economic order is altogether 
bad. It is often spoken of solely in terms of exploita¬ 
tion or materialism ; a simple and on the whole satis- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 185 

factory order of society is being ousted, so it is 
suggested, by another whose main motive power is 
the greed of the wealthier nations ; the simplicity and 
spiritual quality of village life is contrasted with the 
horrors of mine and factory in lands hardly yet pro¬ 
vided with those poor checks which the social con¬ 
science has imposed upon industrialism in the West. 

Of course there is truth in this reproach, but there 
is much that is purely sentimental delusion. A 
machine-using civilization may be a spiritual one ; 
a primitive civilization may be, for the mass of man¬ 
kind, scarcely above the animal level. The first thing 
that strikes the most casual visitor to the East is the 
spectacle of men, and women too, performing tasks 
which beasts perform in other lands. Where great 
populations press upon the land and hunger is never 
far away a burden rests upon human shoulders which 
people in Western lands hardly understand. Per¬ 
haps a slightly sensitive tourist may feel a twinge of 
understanding when he steps into a rickshaw and is 
pulled away to his destination by a human horse. 
The beautiful handicrafts of China are justly praised, 
but still more wonderful is the contrast between the 
artistic capacity of the workman and his tolerance of 
the most indescribable working conditions. Writing 
of primitive industry and transport in China, Mr. 
J. B. Tayler says : 

In all this industry there is nothing to spare the 
muscles. One watches the beating out of ingots of 
iron, or pairs of laborers bathed in perspiration 
spending days sawing planks out of big logs that a 
band saw would reduce in an hour or two ; else¬ 
where it may be coolies fighting for the privilege of 


l86 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

carrying heavy loads a day’s journey for the cost of 
a few bowls of rice. In the north, much of the 
traffic is by wheelbarrow. Waiting at a wayside 
inn at dusk on a dry frosty winter’s evening one is 
deafened by the strident creaking of the large 
wooden wheels as the barrowmen arrive. Singly 
and in groups they continue to drop in well on 
into the night. Their barrows, with loads up to 
four hundredweights, are left in the unflagged 
courtyard. . . . Before dawn the next morning 
they are on the road again, not breakfasting until 
perhaps ten or eleven o’clock, passing the day on 
two meals only. In this way they tramp hour after 
hour with but brief rests, pushing and balancing 
their heavy loads in the grooves worn by others 
before them, crossing and recrossing the cart roads, 
with their deep ruts smothered in inches of dust, 
mounting banks several feet high by the roadside 
or crossing a plowed field to cut off a corner ; with 
nothing to save their muscles except when they can 
mount a sail. So they go on, it may be through 
biting wind, in twenty or thirty degrees of frost or 
in blinding dust that penetrates and envelops 
everything, day in, day out, until they have covered 
the hundred miles or more from Shantung to some 
city of the north . 1 

Such a system—and something like this has been the 
lot of the masses of Asia for centuries—supplies little 
more than an animal existence and keeps those en¬ 
gaged in it from rising much above the level of the 
beast of burden. 

Or one thinks of the millions of lives lost in 
famines, and of all that transport means at such times, 
when grain can be rapidly shifted from one area to 
X J. B. Tayler, Farm and Factory in China, p. 40. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 187 

another by modern railways ; or of modern medicine, 
which is a part of modern civilization. The Western 
physician, be he missionary or government officer or 
private practitioner, who comes into contact with 
the measureless physical need of the Eastern masses, 
is not likely to be under any illusions about the 
amenities of life possible to those masses under the 
conditions of the older and more primitive society. 

But it is just as untrue to assume that to take the 
machine age to the East is to confer upon the East an 
unquestioned blessing. Possibly this error is less 
prevalent in our self-conscious and self-critical society 
than it used to be. It is not so long since one used to 
link the blessings of Western civilization with the 
Christian gospel in an unquestioned unity. The 
two things went together. Of course it was better 
for the Eastern peoples to have “ civilization ” ; of 
course it must be for their good that the social in¬ 
stitutions of the West should be planted among them. 
The reflective minds among us are not now so sure 
about these things. But whatever the reflective minds 
may think, the great process goes on. It moves with 
a kind of impersonal force and momentum. The 
quest for markets, the lure of cheap labor, the need 
of raw material and the growth of capitalist and 
entrepreneur groups in the Eastern countries them¬ 
selves, all make it inevitable that the mass popula¬ 
tions of the East and of Africa should be drawn 
within the world economy, which is virtually a West¬ 
ern economy. As we have seen, there is good in 
this, and it can hardly be wrong to see in so great a 
movement, rooted as it is in the essential capacities 
of mankind to understand and master the secrets of 


l88 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

nature, something in which God is at work. But 
just because the great movement must go on, it is as 
important to see clearly the bad in it as to see the 
good. 

First, there are the grosser evils. We have de¬ 
scribed the drudgery and suffering of the old order ; 
what are we to say of the factories and mines of the 
new? Here is an extract from the report of the 
Child Labor Commission of Shanghai 2 (1924), giv¬ 
ing an account of the conditions of work prevailing 
in the silk filatures, where the great majority of the 
employees were women and children and only a few 
were boys: 

The children brush the cocoons and prepare 
them for the reelers by removing the waste and so 
exposing the silk thread. This operation is per¬ 
formed over basins containing nearly boiling water, 
with which the fingers of the children frequently 
and necessarily come into contact, thereby becom¬ 
ing roughened and unsightly. Many of the children 
are very young, being not more than six years of 
age. In the Shanghai district the children almost 
invariably stand at work, five or six hours at a 
stretch. Owing to the presence of the hot water in 
the basins the temperature of the workroom is 
always considerably above the normal and the 
atmosphere is very humid. It was stated that 
fainting in hot weather is not uncommon. The 
children earn from twenty to twenty-five silver cents 
a day. In the main they present a pitiable sight. 
Their physical condition is poor, and their faces are 
devoid of any expression of happiness or well-being. 

2 In the work done in connection with this commission the National 
Christian Council and the Y.W.C.A. of China played a highly im¬ 
portant part. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 189 

They appear to be miserable, both physically and 
mentally. . . . The Commission is satisfied that 
the conditions under which these children are 
employed are indefensible. 3 

If this picture is thought to be out of date (though 
little has been done by legislation combined with 
effective inspection to alter it) here is Professor 
Tawney’s more recent account: 

With the exception of certain individual estab¬ 
lishments . . . the conditions generally obtaining 
in factory employment recall those of the first, and 
worst, phase of the Industrial Revolution in Eng¬ 
land. Not only are hours preposterously long, and 
wages almost incredibly low, but part of the work 
is often done by relays of cheap or unpaid juvenile 
workers, sometimes imported from the country, and 
occasionally, it is alleged, actually sold to their em¬ 
ployers, in shops which are frequently little bet¬ 
ter than barns, and in which the most elementary 
conditions of health and safety appear to be ig¬ 
nored. It is possible, in certain cities, to go through 
a succession of these little establishments, which 
may or may not be technically factories, largely 
staffed with boys between eight and sixteen years 
of age, working twelve to fourteen hours per day 
for seven days in the week, and sleeping at night 
on the floor of the shop, in which the lighting is 
such as to make it certain that the sight of many 
of them will be permanently injured, machinery is 
completely unguarded, the air is loaded with poi¬ 
sonous dust, which there is no ventilation to re¬ 
move, and the buildings are unprovided, in spite 
of municipal by-laws, with emergency exits, with 
3 Humanity and Labor in China, pp. 153 - 54 - The whole report 
can be seen in Cmd. 2442. 


igO CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

the result that, in the event of fire, some proportion 
of the workers will almost certainly be burned. 4 

Here is a testimony from India, describing the 
chawls in tenement houses in which the Bombay 
millworker lives : 

Land is exceedingly valuable and the people 
live in gloomy tenements, often four or five stories 
high, with primitive sanitation, rambling passages 
and stairways from floor to floor that are little 
better than ladders. Up under the roof on the top¬ 
most story, an adult may not be able to stand 
upright and many rooms have little or no natural 
light. . . . One-roomed dwellings are the rule in 
most Indian working class quarters, but it was 
surprising even in Bombay to find four families 
living in the four corners of a room, while a fifth 
found accommodation on a high table which 
turned one corner into a two-story dwelling. 5 

Anyone who studies these questions soon finds 
pathetic illustrations of the truth that we are mem¬ 
bers one of another, for the increasing unity of the 
economic order produces some strange results. For 
instance, the acuteness of the slump in America cut 
the Japanese silk export to pieces, and one effect was 
that in the terrible distress that followed numbers of 
Japanese girls sold themselves into prostitution to 
support their families. 

But apart from these obvious and terrible evils 
there is the not less important fact of the deep and 
subtle change that is being wrought in the life and 
culture of the people, not merely in the towns but in 

4 Land and Labor in China, pp. 149-50. 

5 M. Cecile Matheson, Indian Industry, p. 40. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 191 

the villages. It is a familiar story now that the rail¬ 
way, the motor bus, the wireless, the cheap newspaper 
and the like have gone far to break down the aloof¬ 
ness of the Asiatic village. They have broken down 
much else. The old family organization of life in 
China and the caste order of India are both weak¬ 
ened by the implicit individualism that comes with 
the newer conditions. An experienced missionary 
in China pointed out to me the rise in the practice 
of life insurance in China as an example of the grow¬ 
ing individualism. An Indian Christian wrote to me 
from the north India city in which he was engaged 
as a social worker : 

To earn their livelihood villagers have left the 
villages for the big cities and for other provinces— 
Bombay, Calcutta, Cawnpore, Assam, Malay, 
Burma—going there without wives and often set¬ 
tling down in the new places where there are no 
longer the restraints of the panchayat (village 
court) and moral sanctions of society. Caste is 
losing its old force ; marriages are made in other 
castes, as advertised in the newspapers. In these 
days Brahmans are working in leather trades and 
as carpenters, blacksmiths and weavers, trades once 
considered taboo. Railway traveling rubs the cor¬ 
ners off, people eat in restaurants with their shoes 
on and without a ceremonial bath before eating. 
The joint family system, owing to these things, is 
being disintegrated ; the village entity is disappear¬ 
ing because the people are moving to the towns 
and establishing relationships with city people. 

This kind of thing could be quoted from every part 
of the East. The effects are not all bad ; new ideas 
of sanitation make their way; if the old religion is 


192 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

weakened (as everywhere it is) there is less of the 
superstition which obstructed health and cleanli¬ 
ness. Most o 2 all, the new social world is one in which 
the evils of society are known, discussed and repro¬ 
bated, and in which their extinction is planned. 
Not only the evils of the factory area but the suffer¬ 
ings of the peasant are now understood by earnest 
men and women who want to “ do something about 
it.** 

Hence, I think, the rise of communism in the East. 
In neither China nor India is it solely, or even pri¬ 
marily, an urban affair. It has its roots in the condi¬ 
tion of the rural masses, illuminated by the socially 
quickened consciousness of educated people from the 
towns. I have already quoted Professor Tawney’s ver¬ 
dict on Chinese communism. 6 Pandit Jawaharlal 
Nehru’s autobiography affords from the Indian side a 
graphic account of the rise of communistic ideas in the 
desperate villages of the United Provinces. It is in in¬ 
dustrialized Japan, where industry as contrasted with 
agriculture embraces almost half of the population, 
that communism has had an urban setting. 

It is plain that some of the greatest problems that 
confront the student of changing society in the East 
can be solved only by state action. That does not 
mean that states may not be induced to act by the 
force of opinion, but it does mean that for some of 
the evils that afflict the masses the efforts of private 
reformers can do little. Consider, for example, the 
problems of tenancy and of agricultural debt. One of 
the features of rural life in all Asia is the struggle of 
the farmer to keep or to get hold of the land. China 
6 See Chap. II. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 193 

has had a stronger tradition of the owner-farmer than 
either India or Japan, but even there Professor J. L. 
Buck estimates that not more than from a half to three- 
fifths of the cultivators are owners and from a fifth to 
a quarter part owner and part tenant. There are 
figures for the whole country, but while in the drought 
and famine stricken Yellow river region in the north 
the owner percentage is as high as 69, in the wealthier 
region of the Yangtse valley and the south it is only 32, 
and in the rich provinces of Chekiang, Kwangtung 
and Fukien, occupied with overseas trade, it is respec¬ 
tively 27, 30 and 9. Plainly, in regions where the 
accumulation of wealth is possible, there has been a 
buying up of farms. 

In Japan it is stated that 31 per cent of the farmers 
are owners, 27 per cent tenants and 42 per cent part 
owner and part tenant. There have been thousands 
of tenant strikes and refusals to pay the rent. 

In India there is a variety of systems of land tenure, 
but it is roughly true that in the north there is the big 
landlord or zamindari system and in the south the 
small-holder or ryotwari system. In India—the same 
is true to some extent in Japan and China—there is 
the additional evil of the excessive fragmentation of 
holdings through the operation of laws of inheritance. 
The economic working of the land of India demands 
some comprehensive measure of consolidation of 
holdings to make profitable farming possible. 

Agricultural debt is a staggering fact in India. In 
the Panjab, for example, the total cultivated land 
amounts to about thirty million acres. The annual 
land revenue chargeable on this area is about fifty 
million rupees. The interest on the debt owed on 


194 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

account of the land is nearly two hundred million 
rupees annually. It is difficult to see how this debt 
can be paid and how there can be any rural prosperity 
under these conditions. In Japan it is officially stated 
that the average debt of a farming family is about £55, 
but some economists hold that the true figures are 
higher and that the total farm debt is now between 
£500 and £600 millions, whereas twenty years ago 
it was £40 millions. 

These are only examples—no more is possible 
within the scope of this book—to show the nature of 
the rural problems in these Eastern lands. One need 
not be surprised to find that radical ideas on the 
handling of rural economics meet with a ready wel¬ 
come. The problem clearly must be faced ; if not, 
nothing can stay the growth of desperate discontent. 

There is, however, much that can be done even 
within the present system to pave the way for better 
things. Both in India and in China, and to a smaller 
degree in Japan, vigorous efforts have been made 
during the last few years to bring a fresh coherence 
into Christian work in the rural areas. The attention 
given to this subject at the Jerusalem meeting of the 
International Missionary Council in 1928, with the 
work of Dr. Kenyon Butterfield throughout the East 
immediately after it, did a great deal to clear the 
corporate mind of the churches and missions on the 
question of right policy and method. With some 
differences in detail the main line of development in 
India and in China has been much the same. It is 
what in India is called the “ rural reconstruction 
unit.’* Put less formally, it is a plan to unite the 
home, the church, the school, the hospital and the 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 195 

credit bank—five basal institutions of the corporate 
life—in a plan for the creation of a better rural 
society. I include the church as central to any Chris¬ 
tian village plan, but the same central ideas are opera¬ 
tive in government circles and indeed among all who 
work for the uplift of the villages. Indeed there is 
no department of work in which in India and China 
alike there is so ample opportunity for close col¬ 
laboration on the part of Christian bodies, govern¬ 
ments and private agencies. 

In India it means the restoration of the broken 
unity of village life, through the revival of the old 
village courts and the recovery of village industries, 
with which Mr. Gandhi and his campaign for home- 
spun cloth have been so greatly concerned. Educa¬ 
tion for the village is the subject of endless discussion, 
and in devising right ways of training village teachers 
and relating curricula to the experience and needs of 
village children missionary training schools have an 
honorable record. Adult education and the reduc¬ 
tion of adult mass illiteracy are in the front of the 
picture in India as in China. The rural credit bank 
and cooperative society have long played an impor¬ 
tant part in India in reducing the burden of debt, 
though many missions know to their cost how much 
easier it is to lend money when the society starts 
than to recover it as time demands repayment. The 
provision of a better health service is vital, and there 
are increasing numbers of medical missionaries and 
Indian Christian physicians who wish to develop the 
Christian ministry of healing especially in the villages 
through simple methods of itinerant medical work. 

The central idea of the unit plan is to take a group 


196 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

of villages, reasonably contiguous, and through the 
five organs—home, church, school, bank and hospital 
or dispensary—to work coherently toward a stronger 
community. It is plain that such cooperative plan¬ 
ning is vital to the growth of the rural Christian 
churches, apart from its bearing on general state 
plans for rural advancement. If the already large 
communities of rural Christians drawn from the bot¬ 
tom social groups should greatly increase, as I have 
shown to be likely, this complete rural method will 
become even more important, for on it will depend 
the possibility of self-supporting churches. 

In China, notably in the province of Kiangsi from 
which the communist forces had been driven, the 
government has undertaken a great piece of rural 
reconstruction, and has been notably aided by the 
church in the rural experimental center at Lichwan. 
Village cooperative societies have been started on a 
considerable scale by the China International Fam¬ 
ine Relief Commission, with full backing from the 
government. These societies have been valuable also 
in teaching the people to work together in various 
types of reconstructive work, such as better commu¬ 
nications, better village schools and the promotion of 
health measures. At Nanking there is under the 
charge of Dr. J. Lossing Buck what is perhaps the 
finest center of rural study and research under 
Christian auspices in any part of Asia. 

In Japan, as we have seen, the church has been 
urban to a far greater extent than in India or China. 
Of the twelve hundred missionaries in Japan not 
more than a hundred are in rural areas. But now 
far more attention is devoted to rural needs, and the 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 197 

methods of the Danish folk high schools, so influen¬ 
tial as an example to the whole world, are being as¬ 
siduously studied by Japanese Christians. They have 
noted that in Denmark there is no sense of inferiority 
among the Danish farmers, who are proud of their 
rural life, and those who work among the Japanese 
villages are urged to acquire “ the rural mind.” 

At this point we may note a development in China 
which may become an example to other parts of the 
East. It is generally agreed that the prosperity of 
China demands an increase in industrial production, 
and it has been too easily assumed that this means 
necessarily the big factory with its concentration of 
labor. Professor Tayler has been the leader in a 
most interesting movement, the object of which has 
been to assist village industries, or industries which 
though not strictly “ village ” can be carried on with 
the minimum disturbance of home and village life, 
by bringing to them such technical help as may en¬ 
able them to hold their own even against the compe¬ 
tition of the mass factory. He has helped to develop 
woolen industries and pottery making in North China 
in such a way as to preserve village life while greatly 
increasing the economic resources of the peasant. It 
would seem to a layman that along this line there 
must be a future. The hunger of the masses of Asia 
(India has seen her population increase by over one 
hundred millions since the beginning of the nine¬ 
teenth century) 7 cannot be assuaged without an 
increase in industry, but it must be possible to de- 

7 The population of the world has increased in that period by over 
one thousand millions, but this has been chiefly in the industrialized 
countries. 


ig8 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

velop industry without the appalling effects upon 
national and individual life that follow upon the 
great festering aggregations of population in the fac¬ 
tory and mill centers. Here is one of the spheres 
where the application of a measure of technical skill 
to the problems may work wonders. 

In the great mining and factory areas it is not easy 
to point to outstanding efforts on the part of Chris¬ 
tian bodies. There are notable pieces of work, such 
as settlements and “ neighborhood houses ” in Bom¬ 
bay and Cawnpore, in Osaka and Shanghai, and 
many brave men and women have devoted themselves 
with absolute self-forgetfulness to improving the con¬ 
ditions of these places. Much of the welfare work 
carried on by the great firms is put into the hands of 
missions or of the Young Men’s and Young Women’s 
Christian associations, and the Y.W.C.A. in particu¬ 
lar has a rather notable record of pioneer work in 
this field. But even when all this is said, it is still 
true that in proportion to the size and gravity of the 
problem too little is done. 

Undoubtedly it is to legislation that we must look 
for some of the most important action. The Wash¬ 
ington convention of 1919 resulted in a series of pro¬ 
posals for the regulation of the hours and labor of 
women and children (to take the most important 
items) which were carried into law in India and later 
in Japan, and the Chinese factory laws go in theory 
even further. But laws are useless without sanction 
for enforcement, and the conditions in China (in 
which extra-territoriality must be included) have 
made it difficult for the Chinese government to invest 
its industrial codes with the stern aspect of reality. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 199 

Even the Japanese laws are accompanied by an omi¬ 
nous number of exceptive clauses, and in India, 
where on the whole labor protective legislation is in 
advance of anything in the East, all depends on the 
number of inspectors and that again upon provincial 
finance. 

Trade unions—the principal method, when all is 
said, by which the Western working class has sought 
to protect itself—have come into being in the East, 
but not yet in any strength. In Japan they live a 
somewhat dangerous life under the present regime ; 
in China, says Professor Tawney, the trade union act, 
“ while recognizing the right of association, surrounds 
it with restrictions which appear to deprive it of much 
of its value.” 8 In India trade unions are stronger, 
but the movement is split between a communist sec¬ 
tion and a moderate group, and is in many parts still 
the plaything of politicians. 

Here, then, is one of the major unsolved questions 
of our time. It is fundamentally the same as that 
which vexes the mind of thoughtful Christians in 
every country of the Western world. What is the 
Christian message and the duty of the church in the 
face of these social facts ? 

I dislike the antithesis “ Christianity or commu¬ 
nism,” for it suggests that Christianity belongs to the 
same genus as communism but is a better variety. 
Yet there is truth in the slogan, for communism 
claims to explain the economic phenomena of the 
modern world and to offer a certain hope of their 
alteration based upon a view of reality, and Christian¬ 
ity likewise is an all-embracing faith based upon a 
8 Land and Labor in China, p. 151. 


200 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

doctrine of reality. There ought, it is felt, to be a 
definite Christian social doctrine and social pro¬ 
gram. 

Toyohiko Kagawa, if I understand him aright, 
would say that there is such a definite Christian social 
doctrine and program in the cooperative movement. 
In his hands it has gone far beyond the consumers’ 
cooperative societies which are most familiar to the 
Western world, and beyond the rural credit and mar¬ 
keting organizations of India and China. In a letter 
referring primarily to his new medical cooperative 
society Kagawa says : 

The whole movement for the establishment of 
Christian society through the cooperatives is what 
I call the modern brotherhood movement. Medi¬ 
cal cooperatives are one small subitem in it, in¬ 
cluded in the much wider general heading of 
mutual aid cooperatives. Besides these there are in¬ 
surance cooperatives, credit unions, producers’ co¬ 
operatives, marketing cooperatives and utility 
cooperatives, as well as the kind most familiar to 
you in Britain, consumers’ cooperatives. Only 
when all these seven varieties of cooperatives shall 
have been thoroughly established and are inter¬ 
locking, in international as well as national world¬ 
wide absorption of activities now carried on by 
private competition and in the old laissez faire 
manner, shall we as Christians have an adequate 
message for the communists. 9 

Dr. Kagawa has a philosophy of cooperative eco¬ 
nomics which I will try to summarize in words taken 
from his own writings. Matter, he says, has no mean- 
italics mine. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 


201 


ing as a commodity unless it touches the following 
seven points : purpose or aim ; order or law ; selec¬ 
tion or efficiency; growth; exchange; energy or 
power; life at its highest. The seven types of co¬ 
operative mentioned above yield the seven psycho¬ 
logical values required. Consumers’ cooperatives 
touch life at the point of purpose or aim in getting 
food and other material necessities for an advancing 
civilization ; producers’ cooperatives deal with and re¬ 
lease energy and power for production ; credit co¬ 
operatives provide for growth, as capital is necessary 
for economic enterprise ; marketing cooperatives se¬ 
cure an adequate system of exchange ; mutual aid, 
utility and insurance cooperatives provide for ef¬ 
ficiency in the selection of the higher values in life 
which the whole movement tries to create for the 
benefit of all. All cooperatives promote law and 
order by smoothing out local, national and inter¬ 
national difficulties in the economic and social 
realm. 10 

I have stated Dr. Kagawa’s view at length because 
he is the only Christian in the East who has offered a 
Christian doctrine and method on a question of burn¬ 
ing importance, and because he himself and his fol¬ 
lowers believe that he has found something of world 
importance. I am not qualified, nor is it possible 
within the limits of this little book, to criticize 
Kagawa’s views in detail, but it is only honest to indi¬ 
cate something of the line along which one believes 
the forward path lies. 

The communists are right as against a great deal 
of current Christianity. It is perfectly true (and an 
10 See, e.g., Japan Christian Quarterly, spring, 1935. 


202 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

important part of the case against communism) that 
in the communist view there is no place for individual 
freedom. But if, as our Lord would have us do, we 
judge by actions and not by words, we cannot deny 
that the present economic order does not conspicu¬ 
ously care about individual worth and freedom, and 
that a great many Christians have in fact assented to 
this practice while insisting in words upon the in¬ 
finite worth of the individual. Religion which does 
not seek to express its deepest insights by appropriate 
effort in the stern field of action can hardly hope to 
escape the charge (to use the language of Professor 
Macmurray) that it is only pseudo-religion. 

But the most common version of Christian social 
thinking, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, the school 
of liberal social Christianity, is open to a different but 
not less fatal criticism. It has not taken sin seriously. 
It has been based upon an optimistic view of human 
nature. “It has insisted that good will can establish 
justice, whatever the political and economic mecha¬ 
nisms may be. It has insisted on this futile moralism 
at a moment in history when the whole world faces 
disaster because the present methods of production 
and distribution are no longer able to maintain the 
peace and order of society.” 11 I find it hard not to 
believe that Kagawa, for instance, claims too much 
for his cooperatives if they are thought of not only 
as ways whereby Christians may together express their 
corporate life but as a substitute for the controlling 
power of a right social mechanism. 

If, then, a Christianity that is merely withdrawn 
from radical concern with the social problem is 
11 Reinhold Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 181. 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 203 

wrong, and if we are not less at fault if we regard 
Christian moral effort and persuasion as enough, are 
we limited to the view that nothing matters but 
action in the political realm ? 

I think not. This rough sketch, covering so slightly 
a vast territory, has at least shown that. What have 
we seen ? Efforts, especially in the rural field, to ex¬ 
press common Christian life in a better social order— 
weak and imperfect, it may be, but each one a little 
oasis in the desert of hunger, debt, disease and illiter¬ 
acy, making the good news of Christ real in the face 
of earthly need. Efforts again, whether by individuals 
or groups or societies, to denounce and expose evil, 
so that those who are in charge of the engine of gov¬ 
ernment may be stirred, or to suggest the lines along 
which governmental action might be taken. 12 Be¬ 
hind all this, the continuous life of a community, the 
church, at its worst no more than a self-regarding 
society, but at its best the source of dynamic life and 
hope and changed men and women. 

It is in a combination of these three things that 
hope for the future lies. To go back to the principles 
stated again and again in this book, realistic Christi¬ 
anity demands the recognition of a tension between 
the absolute demand of God upon the human soul, 
the law of love, universal and perfect, and the best 
society that can be devised in our sinful world. To 
believe that by our effort and devotion we can, as so 
often we loosely say, “ establish the kingdom of 
heaven on earth ” is to forget that it is God who 

12 Perhaps the most notable instance is the work of the International 
Missionary Council’s commission of inquiry into the conditions in the 
Rhodesian copper belt. See Modern Industry and the African, by 
J. Merle Davis. 


204 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

establishes his kingdom, and to fall into the profound 
error of communism, that a human society can be 
produced which is beyond the need of redemption. 
Along that path, no matter how devoted and selfless 
the effort put forth, nothing lies but a secularized 
church, lost in the multitude of its own service to 
man. But we must nevertheless continuously strive 
to put into action every insight we get from God. 
Every little Christian community, every bit of Chris¬ 
tian service to the poor and oppressed, if it is rooted 
in humble reliance upon God, is a testimony within 
the earthly order to that diviner order by which 
earthly things are always to be judged. The economic 
sphere of life is to be the continual scene of efforts 
by Christians to make real their religious insight and 
conviction. A religion that within a world of sin 
and need testifies to the absolute law of love only by 
words is condemned. Knowing always that within 
this world the absolute law of love will ever be be¬ 
yond them, Christians will strive none the less to 
carry it into the heart of their practice. It is a para¬ 
dox, but only to those who view it from without. 

Secondly, they will take their part in the work of 
secular government. To say that no governmental 
system can be perfect is not to say that all are equally 
good or bad. That is the better system which goes 
furthest to make possible the realization by men of 
the Christian values and standards of life. Christians 
are acutely divided on this question ; ideal fascism, 
ideal communism and ideal democracy—each is of¬ 
fered to us as the type of state most congruous with 
the Christian insights. The struggle among these 
systems is one in which Christians are vitally con- 


THE CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 


205 


cerned. Leaving aside the political aspects, 13 it is an 
important part of the Christian witness to protest 
against social evil, to denounce oppression, and to 
seek by every means of public education and persua¬ 
sion to make the legal and political structure of a 
country such as is just. A valuable work can be done 
by accurate and informed exposure of facts. 

But it is in the last resort with the life of the church 
itself that the Christian social witness is mainly bound 
up. It is for it to serve the world by producing men 
and women who have the spirit and the insight that 
it needs. Thus it will fill with power the social activi¬ 
ties and experiments it may conduct. Thus it will 
add to what state action can do the subtle ways of 
personal service. Most of all, being a community of 
people bound together as persons in common love 
and service to God and to one another, it will witness 
by its life to the kingdom of which it is in some 
sense the earnest and token. 

Professor Wieman, of Chicago, sums up the mat¬ 
ter : 


The early church was not primarily an instru¬ 
mental association. It was not first of all devoted 
to service or good works. We do not find that it 
concentrated its efforts immediately on providing 
wholesome recreation, or fighting political corrup¬ 
tion, or bringing justice into the economic system, 

13 1 would say on this point only that a democratic system seems 
to me plainly best by Christian standards, provided political freedom 
is accompanied by economic. The other two systems appear to be 
attempts to reintegrate a disintegrating society by recourse to an 
absolute authority. The democratic statesman must therefore not 
merely repel communism and fascism but address himself to the 
problem which the fascist and communist try to solve. 


206 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

or improving the schools, or opposing slavery, or 
doing any good works in marked degree except to 
dispense charity. It was organic rather than in¬ 
strumental. It was an association devoted to saving 
souls ; that is, it fostered, enriched and exalted the 
individualities of its members until these outcasts, 
these downtrodden and crushed, these slaves and 
riffraff rose up in towering strength to dominate 
the age. Such magnified and developed personali¬ 
ties could and did, in the course of time, enter into 
instrumental association for the purpose of doing 
good works, removing causes of evil, transforming 
conditions and reconstructing the world. We do 
not mean to suggest that the church should refrain 
from good works. On the contrary, it should do 
even more than it is doing. It should be an instru¬ 
mental association as well as organic. But first of 
all, we claim, it should be organic. Its first and 
greatest function in the world is to bring people 
together in such a way that they can interact in 
deep organic community, with profound mutual 
understanding. It should quicken to life and to 
abundant growth those impulses, aspirations and 
personal attitudes wherein the individual comes to 
largest fulfillment of his utmost possibilities. This 
is individual salvation ; but it is also profoundly 
social. 14 

14 H. N. Wieman, Methods of Private Religious Living, pp. 145-46. 


IX 


CONCLUSION 



LMOST every day one meets somebody who 


has just read the foreign page of the London 
Times and feels that “ the world is in a terrible mess.” 
A good many people get no further than this, and it 
is a commonplace that the saturation of the public 
mind with news of suffering and horror during and 
ever since the World War has brought with it a 
certain callousness. I have never forgotten the sor¬ 
rowful remark of the secretary of one of the greatest 
missionary societies who, after outlining a case of need 
and opportunity which was likely to go by default 
because money could not be found, said, “ The trou¬ 
ble is not that people don’t know but that they don’t 
really care.” 

Nothing could be further from the Christian mind 
than this. The Christian view is still the prophetic 
view. Jeremiah and his fellows were not content 
to say that things were in a mess—as in their time 
they undoubtedly were. The prophetic voice sought 
to find in the events of the world the mind and will of 
God, and to call men to repent and obey, no matter 
how terrible the cost of the obedience. 

We need this attitude today. The purpose of this 
book is to show, no matter how imperfectly nor with 
what ignorance and dogmatism, that we live in a day 
of the Lord. Quite unashamedly I have taken the 
church as the key to the situation, for I believe that 


208 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

the witness of the divine community in the world 
takes us nearer than anything else to the meaning of 
history. Who cares about the Assyrians and their 
conquests now, or for the glories of Babylon ? What 
mattered then was the fate of an obscure pair of 
Syrian kingdoms. The groups of outcasts and “ base 
things of the world ” that began the witness of the 
church in Europe outlasted the Roman Empire, to 
which they must have seemed utterly insignificant. 
Who can say that the witness of Christians today in 
Japan or in Manchuria, in China, in the Indian 
villages, in Iran or Turkey or Egypt, may not in the 
judgment of history seem far greater in importance 
than any of the events which today fill men’s eyes ? 
It is idle to dream, but it is not idle to choose the 
standard by which you will live and judge and be 
judged. 

In a world of change, full of menace, with new 
gods arising as the twilight embraces the old, these 
scattered Christian communities live out their lives. 
Some of them face the prospect of annihilation. Some 
face possibilities of immense growth. Some are 
almost asleep. But all are parts of the universal 
church, and the varied situations of which an account 
has been given in this book do not relate only to them 
but to the whole church throughout the world. What 
of the Western churches in this day ? Is there in 
these Eastern conflicts a word of God not only to the 
churches of those lands but to those of the West also ? 

Let us look first at the secular problems that con¬ 
front us. I have written critically of the Japanese 
policy, and it is therefore all the more necessary to 
say that the Western powers, not least Great Britain, 


CONCLUSION 


209 


are not guiltless of forcing Japan into a mood of bit¬ 
terness and self-assertiveness in defense against an 
“ encirclement ” such as Germany believed herself 
caught in before the World War. As far back as the 
framing of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 
the Japanese sought to secure the incorporation of a 
clause which would definitely assert racial equality. 1 
The request was rejected at the instance of the British 
empire, and when brought up a second time as a part 
of the preamble to the Covenant it was again rejected, 
with the British empire leading the opposition. (The 
fact that it was Australian pressure that led to this 
result does not exonerate the representatives of Great 
Britain.) So judicious an observer as Professor Toyn¬ 
bee 2 is of the opinion that the anti-Japanese trade 
regulations, while defensible up to a point in view 
of unemployment in Lancashire and the dislocated 
state of world trade, did definitely increase in Japan 
the sense of being alone in the world with all men’s 
hands against her. 

This is but one instance, and there are countless 
others in the history of the relationships between the 
Western powers and those of the East. Or take the 
issue of race relationships. I have said almost nothing 
of the subject in this book, but it is of the highest 
importance. I am thinking not only of the iniquities 
of color-bar legislation and the like, but of the exist¬ 
ence of racial pride and antipathy within the church 
itself. Islam is not slow to make the most of this 
weakness. Years ago the Moslems in South Africa 
began to invite Africans to embrace Islam on the 

1 The facts are given in Zimmem, The League of Nations and the 
Rule of Law , Part II, Chap. X. 

2 See Survey of International Affairs, 1934, p. 666. 


210 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

ground, among other claims, that it offered racial 
equality, unlike Christianity which perpetuated the 
white man’s dominance. In Travancore, where there 
is the great movement among the Ezhavas toward 
Christianity, a recent convert from Hinduism to 
Islam declared, at a great meeting of Ezhavas, that in 
Islam alone was there real brotherhood without dis¬ 
tinction of color or race or caste. 

But what of the relation between these younger 
churches in the East and the older churches of the 
West ? What is demanded of Western Christians ? 

First, there is need of genuine knowledge. It is 
really amazing to find how little interest is taken in 
the dramatic facts of modern church history by Chris¬ 
tian people, not excluding a large number of clergy 
and ministers. Even when there is interest there is 
often little knowledge ; sentiment and the desire to 
hear of great successes and startling facts obscure the 
realities. How many missionaries on coming home 
have longed to tell the real facts—the difficulties and 
disappointments, the perplexities and anxieties—but 
have felt that the facts were not wanted. 

It should never be forgotten that the Christian 
church, in all its parts taken together throughout the 
whole of the East, is a very small thing. Its weak¬ 
nesses and the limitations under which it labors have, 
I hope, been fairly stated in these pages. A critical 
judge would perhaps accuse me of overstating what 
can be expected from the churches as they are now. 
There is an abundance of criticism of them among the 
keener young in the East, as there is of the churches 
in the West. To some Chinese Christians it would 
seem that much of what is written at the close of the 


CONCLUSION 


211 


last chapter is pure wishful thinking. I have seen 
enough of the magnificent quality of the best native 
leaders of Eastern Christianity to be sure that my 
emphases are not wrong. But, I repeat, the churches 
we are talking about, beset by the same great struggle 
between communism and fascism as the churches of 
the West, wrestling with far greater problems of wit¬ 
ness and interpretation than the churches of the West, 
are, compared with them, very weak and small. It 
is one of the dramatic facts of this day in which we 
live that this tiny, weak, scattered and divided church 
is the spearhead of strife and the center of contro¬ 
versy in so much of the world. We need to know, far 
more of us, the facts about it. 

Second, help in the form of personal service is 
needed. Most of the great missionary societies have 
today many vacancies, for which no candidates can 
be found though funds to send them are available. 
The forms under which the work of the missionary 
is now carried on differ greatly from those of fifty or a 
hundred years ago, but the missionary is still wanted. 
I can find no faltering of accent in the voices that 
send this call to us from the East. That they know 
what sort of people they want, that they ask for 
helpers and not masters, we have all heard. But I 
know of no responsible Christian leaders in Japan, 
China, India or the Near East who would dream of 
denying that for the tasks to which the church is 
called in these lands the indigenous local bodies are 
far too weak, and that as they are tasks for the church 
universal they must have the help of the wider Chris¬ 
tendom. 

More and more, therefore (I say nothing here 


212 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

that is not a truism to every missionary society) the 
mission becomes quite frankly the link between the 
church in the East and the church in the West. An 
Anglican priest who goes out under the Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel or the Church Mis¬ 
sionary Society to China will find himself more con¬ 
scious of his place as a priest in the Chung Hwa Sheng 
Kung Hwei than of his status as a missionary. That 
would not be the case in all countries, but it is with 
that sort of status that we shall be concerned more 
and more in the future. There is a conscious long¬ 
ing among all who bear the burden of leadership in 
the indigenous churches for personal Christian serv¬ 
ice, rendered in the spirit of love and brotherhood, 
backed by as good professional qualifications as a man 
or woman can acquire, and inspired by the love of 
Christ. 

But this is only a part of the personal service that 
is desired and possible. The missionaries are only a 
fraction of the great number of men and women who 
go to the East in the services, on business, in the pro¬ 
fessions, and along all the well trodden avenues where 
the peoples of the nations walk and meet one another. 
Even today, when it is becoming common form in 
the East to make a sharp distinction between Chris¬ 
tianity and Western civilization, these people are 
regarded as Christians. Some of them are, and there 
is hardly any witness that compares with that of the 
Christian layman in business or official life who is not 
afraid to make his ordinary life the vehicle of his 
testimony. More of them, perhaps, have been Chris¬ 
tians and have lost the way. The curious artificiality 
of European life in the East, and the temptations 


CONCLUSION 


213 


incidental to it, play havoc with many who, it may be, 
have not been well enough grounded to stand by 
themselves in an atmosphere where conventions are 
opposed to outspoken Christian profession. The care 
of the oversea European is a vital part of the share 
which the Western churches must take in the whole 
world campaign, and while much can be done in the 
great centers where he is mainly to be found, it is on 
the quality of the life of the churches he has left 
behind that most depends. 

Third, there is money. I have indicated in an 
earlier chapter how difficult are some of the problems 
that inhere in the use of foreign funds in the prosecu¬ 
tion of Christian work in the East. It is only neces¬ 
sary to add that these questions are the subject of the 
most unremitting study on the part of those most in¬ 
timately concerned. No one need have any doubt 
that every farthing given to a missionary society will 
be used with an economy and a fruitfulness that com¬ 
pare favorably with anything in our homelands. The 
generosity of the Christians of the East in relation to 
their resources, which are mostly very small, is liter¬ 
ally astounding. I remember some years ago noticing 
in the published report of a Hindu public conference 
a speech by a leading Hindu who had gathered from 
some source or other figures of the giving of Indian 
Christians to their religious organizations. He was 
astonished. Says Mr. Phillips : “ When one of the 
elders at the harvest thanksgiving gives a sheep or a 
calf, which is not uncommon, it means as much as if 
his opposite number in the West gave his motorcar, 
which is uncommon.” 3 It is well to emphasize the 
3 The Untouchables’ Quest , p. 58. 


214 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

dangers which an unwise use of foreign money can 
bring with it to the indigenous churches, but when 
full allowance has been made for that, it remains 
abundantly true that the great tasks to which the 
whole church is called in the East require, if they 
are to be accomplished, the generosity of the older 
churches of the West with their enormously greater 
resources. 

Perhaps it is worth saying here that we have all to 
get used to the church basis of work in the East, and 
not least in the matter of giving. I doubt whether 
those who give to missionary work as yet sense this 
need as fully as they ought. It is simpler to think 
in terms of “ our mission in China,” and I have 
shown that the missionary and his society are needed 
and will be needed for many a year yet. But it is 
essential that we should be prepared also to help and 
to give to the work conceived of as the work of the 
church and to foster in ourselves the same sort of 
personal and affectionate interest in the growing 
churches that is widely felt, thank God, toward the 
missions to which for so many years prayers and gifts 
have gone forth. We need much more of the sort of 
evidence which the Indian Mission of Fellowship to 
Great Britain and Ireland supplied, in its demonstra¬ 
tion that there does actually exist a church of Jesus 
Christ in these far-off lands, different from our own 
congregations—and yet how much like them ! 

But now we come to what for the mass of us Chris¬ 
tian people in the West is the root of the matter. 
There is no service that we can render to the churches 
in the East or in Africa greater than this : that our 
own witness be pure, brave, informed, humble and 




CONCLUSION 


215 


united. To say this is not, indeed, to say—as some 
unwisely do—that it is useless to aid missionary work 
until our own church life is on a higher level. For 
“ we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus our 
Lord.” If Western Christianity were to be blotted 
out there is a seed sown that will grow. But they 
take a dangerous line who urge that Western Chris¬ 
tianity and the life of the Western nations is in the 
main a liability, and that the way forward is to sepa¬ 
rate the gospel from its Western historic setting. It 
cannot be done, and it ought not to be tried. It is 
right that non-Christian peoples should ask them¬ 
selves what fruits the gospel has borne in the West. 
Why should they expect it to do anything for them if 
they are told by the earnest but misguided evangelist 
that they must not worry their heads about what it 
has done in the West ? But as I have said, the thing 
is impossible. Such events as the betrayal of Abys¬ 
sinia cannot be hid, and they are discussed, and their 
bearing upon the quality of life of the Christian West 
considered wherever intelligent people meet in. the 
East. 

What would it not mean for the whole church of 
Christ in the world, and not least in the Eastern 
world, if there were a revival of deep and true reli¬ 
gion in England or Scotland, in Germany or in 
America ? I should rather say—What does it not 
mean ? The echoes of the brave stand of the German 
Confessional Synod and of the theological deepening 
that has accompanied it have gone out into all the 
world. The Group movement, in so far as it has 
offered the hope of a new and spontaneous lay wit¬ 
ness of wholehearted Christian discipleship, has at- 


216 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

tracted attention literally everywhere. Men and 
women laboring in the obscure places in our own 
country, seeking to understand and obey the word of 
God as he speaks to them in their own place and time, 
are in vital and immediate touch, through the fel¬ 
lowship of the Holy Spirit, with all other Christians. 

I have referred to the crying need for unity in the 
work of the church abroad. Need I say that that 
unity is withheld not only, nor in my judgment 
principally, by the divisive tendencies of the local 
Christians themselves—though they exist—but even 
more by the inability of the long separated Western 
churches to overcome their historic divisions ? It is 
an open question whether it is going to be possible to 
get much further with plans for unity in the Eastern 
countries and in Africa unless the crucial questions 
are faced in the Western churches with the same keen 
desire to overcome them. There is tenfold more 
unity of action among the missionary societies than 
among the churches of which they are the instru¬ 
ments. Perhaps the gift that at this moment the 
younger churches can best give to the older is the 
realization that it is in the common fellowship of the 
evangelistic task that the lines of separation become 
not merely inconvenient but intolerable. If we were 
all keener to see our own country with its great un¬ 
churched masses won for Christ we should be in the 
temper which truly longs for unity. 

There is the task of Christian thought. I have 
referred to the great forthcoming world meeting to 
be held at Oxford on the theme “ Church, Com¬ 
munity and State.” It is being held with the purpose 
and in the hope that light may be shed on some of 


CONCLUSION 


217 

the central questions which confront Christians as 
they face the modern world. Manifestly these ques¬ 
tions are world-wide—I trust that this book has made 
that plain, if it were doubted—and great benefits will 
come to the younger churches if the older, with their 
greater store of Christian training and intellectual 
equipment, can think and pray their way through to 
a clearer presentation of the word that God would 
have the church speak today. 

It seems to me that one of the tasks most clearly 
laid upon our generation is to make real the ecumen¬ 
ical fellowship of the Christian church. Ideally this 
means a united church, and for that we pray and 
work. But there is much that can be done short of 
that longed-for consummation. Is it realized that 
today there is probably a more extensive personal 
friendship among men and women of all nations who 
bear burdens of leadership and service within the 
different churches than, probably, at any time in 
modern history ? It is tempting—and there are many 
who yield to the temptation with singularly little re¬ 
sistance—to laugh easily at the rather numerous in¬ 
ternational Christian organizations and to write them 
off as talking shops, wasteful of the time of men who 
should be occupied with real things. The World 
Conference on Faith and Order ; the Universal Chris¬ 
tian Council for Life and Work; the International 
Missionary Council; the World’s Student Christian 
Federation ; the World’s Alliances of Young Men’s 
and Young Women’s Christian associations; the 
World Alliance of the Churches for International 
Friendship—even these are by no means all, and most 
Christians have heard of none of them ! But taken 


218 CHRISTIANITY IN THE EASTERN CONFLICTS 

together they do mean, as I have said, a personal 
friendship among Christians of all nations which to 
those who know it is unspeakably precious. But the 
times are instant upon us and we ought not to be con¬ 
tent with this. It is, I believe, a peculiar task of our 
generation to give to this ecumenical Christian move¬ 
ment—for it is that and not merely an aggregation of 
different bodies—more of an outward reality and a 
greater vigor and decisiveness in action. 

But I would not end on the note of human effort. 
Let us go back to the great certainties. I have more 
than once insisted on the connection between the 
prophetic religion of the Hebrews and the Christian 
revelation and the church which is rooted in it. The 
prophets looked forward to the day of the Lord. 
Jesus Christ did not so look forward. He announced 
that the kingdom had come. It was the belief of the 
first Christians that the consummation of all things to 
which the prophets looked forward with straining 
gaze had come to pass in the life, death, resurrection 
and ascension of the Lord. To that supreme act of 
the eternal God within the bounds of space and time 
the church has always looked in adoration, and found 
in it the anchor of its thought. 

A preacher before the undergraduates of Oxford 
recently suggested that St. Paul, or one of his fellow¬ 
ship, would say, not as we do, “I wonder what the 
world is coming to,” but “ I know what has come to 
the world.” Christ Jesus has come, the Savior, full 
of grace and truth. 

We are called not merely to hope, but to realize in 
our lives and in the communities of which we form a 
part that outpouring of the spirit and power of God 


CONCLUSION 


219 


for which the prophets looked in the day of the Lord, 
and which is called in St. John’s Gospel the gift of 
eternal life. All that the Lord Jesus was in his life, 
all that he did for us in his dying upon the cross, all 
that wonderful release of power in Pentecost, these all 
are with us now, for us to make them our own. We 
do not know what lies before us, nor how hard the 
times may be. But we shall never be as those who 
only look to the future for deliverance, and expect in 
the future a golden age, for he has come, he is with 
us, and in him we can do all things. 

" Lo 1 am with you always, even until the end of 
the world ” 


BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING 


Asiatic Asia, S. K. Datta (Faber). 

The Rural Mission of the Church in Eastern Asia, 
K. L. Butterfield (International Missionary 
Council). 

Land and Labour in China, R. H. Tawney (Allen & 
Unwin). 

Farm and Factory in China, J. B. Tayler (Student 
Christian Movement Press). 

China Christian Year Book (obtainable from London 
Missionary Society). 

The Chinese Church in Action, J. Foster (Edinburgh 
House Press). 

Indian Industry, M. C. Matheson (Oxford Uni¬ 
versity Press). 

The Christian Mission in Rural India, K. Butterfield 
(International Missionary Council). 

Socrates in an Indian Village, F. L. Brayne (Oxford 
University Press). 

Behind Mud Walls, C. V. and W. H. Wiser (Allen 8 c 
Unwin). 

The Indian Peasant Uprooted, M. Read (Long¬ 
mans) . 

Christ and Japan, T. Kagawa (Student Christian 
Movement Press). 

Japan Christian Year Book (Kegan Paul). 

Problem of the Far East, S. Mogi and H. V. Redman 
(Gollancz). 

Christianity, Edwyn Bevan (Thornton Butterworth). 

An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Nie¬ 
buhr (Student Christian Movement Press). 

220 





FURTHER READING 


221 


The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments, C. H. 
Dodd (Hodder 8c Stoughton ; Willett, Clark). 

A Faith for the World, W. Paton (Edinburgh House 
Press). 

The Faiths of Mankind, W. Paton (Student Chris¬ 
tian Movement Press). 

Religion and the Modern State, Christopher Dawson 
(Sheed 8c Ward). 

MAGAZINES 

International Review of Missions. Published quar¬ 
terly. Obtainable from Edinburgh House Press, 
2 Eaton Gate, London, S.W.i. 

National Christian Council of India Review. Pub¬ 
lished monthly. Obtainable from Edinburgh 
House Press. 

The Chinese Recorder. Published monthly. Ob¬ 
tainable from 169 Yuen Ming Yuen Road, 
Shanghai, China. 

The Moslem World. Published quarterly. Obtain¬ 
able from Room 1023, 156 Fifth Avenue, New 
York. 

Japan Christian Quarterly. Obtainable from Chris¬ 
tian Literature Society of Japan, Kyo Bun Kwan, 
Ginza, Tokyo, Japan. 

East and West Review. Published quarterly. Ob¬ 
tainable from S.P.C.K. House, Northumberland 
Avenue, London, W.C. 


INDEX 


Ambedkar, Dr., 75—78 
American University of Cairo, 
117 

Azhar University, 118 

Buddhism 
in China, 53-54 
in Japan, 18, 36, 38 
Butterfield, Dr. Kenyon, 194 

Chao, Professor T. C., 62 
Cheng Ching-yi, Dr., 165 
Chiang Kai-shek, General, 58-59 
China, see Chap. II, 41 ff. 
and Japan, 45-49 
Buddhism in, 53-54 
Cheng Ching-yi, Dr., 165 
Christian education, 57-58 
five year movement, 165-66 
industrialism in, 49, 188-90 
Kiangsi Christian Rural Serv¬ 
ice Union, 51 
mass education, 52-53 
National Christian Council, 55 
New Life movement, 165 
rural life in, 49-52 
Church, Christian, the, see 
Chaps. VII, VIII and IX, 
148 ff. 

and emperor worship in Japan 
and Korea, 28-31, 38-39 
and state, 154-59 
and the social order, see Chap. 

VIII, 184 ff. 
in China, 53-63 
in India, 84-96 
in Japan, 33-40 
in Manchuria, 43-44 


Church—in Moslem countries, 
103-4, 107-10, 113-14, US- 

17, 120-21, 122-24 
Kiangsi Christian Rural Serv¬ 
ice Union, 51 
lay witness, 168-69 
mission and, 174-80 
proselytism, 181-83 
rural reconstruction and, 194- 
97 

support of ministry in, 178-80 
theological training in, 169-70 
unity of, 180-82, 216, 217-18 
Church, Community and State, 
conference on, n, 216-17 
Communism, 192 
in Japan, 22 

Confucius, worship of in Man¬ 
churia, 44 

Education, Christian, 56-58, 85- 
88, 108-9, 114, 120-21, 161, 
170-73 

Egypt, 114-19 

American University of Cairo, 

117 

Azhar University, 118 
Egypt Inter-Mission Council, 97 
Ezhavas, movement of, 78, 94 

Five year movement, 165-66 
Formosa, emperor worship in, 30 

Gandhi, Mr., 65-66, 73—75, 95, 
182 

Harper, Dr. and Mrs., 73 
Hinduism, 78-81, 83-84 

India, see Chap. Ill, 64 ff. 
agricultural debt of, 193-94 


222 




INDEX 


India—Ambedkar, Dr. 75-78 
Christian education in, 85-88 
Christianity in, 84-96 
communal problem in, 70-71 
Congress of, 65-70 
Depressed Classes Conference, 
Lucknow, 76 

Ezhavas, movement of, 78, 94 
Gandhi, Mr., 65-66, 73 “ 7 S» 95 , 
182 

Hinduism in, 78-81, 83-84 
illiteracy in, 72-73 
industry in, 81, 190 
Islam in, 82-83 
Moonje, Dr., 76-77 
National Christian Council, 90 
Nehru, Pandit, 67-69, 82 
political scene in, 65-72 
Poona Pact, 74-75 
proselytism in, 95-96 
rural reconstruction in, 195-96 
rural problem in, 72-74 
Industry 

child labor, 188-90 
in China, 49 
in India, 81 
in Japan, 21-22 
International Missionary Coun¬ 
cil meetings 

at Edinburgh (1910), 9, 13 
at Jerusalem (1928), 9, 13, 
194 

in the Far East (1938), 9, 12, 
13 

Iran, 110-14 

Islam, see Chap. IV, 97 ff.; also 
82-83, 209-10 
Moslem church-state, 98 ff. 

Japan, see Chap. I, 17 ff.; also 
208-9 

all-Japan Christian confer¬ 

ence, 32, 35 
and China, 45-49 
and Manchuria, 41-44 
army in, 21, 23, 31-32 
bookshops in, 19 
Buddhism in, 18, 36, 38 


223 

Japan—bureau of religions in, 
32 

Christianity in, 33-40 
Christians and emperor wor¬ 
ship, 28-31, 38-39 
communism in, 22 
culture of, 18-19 
emperor-organ theory, 24 
emperor worship, 23-31, 145 
imperial house of, 17, 23-24 
industry in, 21-22 
Kagawa, Dr., 33, 34, 165, 
200-2 

kingdom of God movement, 
34735, 165 

missionaries in, 36-37 
National Christian Council, 
37 

Overseas Evangelistic Associa¬ 
tion, 36 

Poole School, Osaka, 39-40 
rural debt of, 193-94 
rural reconstruction in, 194, 
196-97 
Shinto, 18 

Showa restoration movement, 
28 

state Shinto, 24-25 
taxation in, 20-21 

Kagawa, Dr. Toyohiko, 33, 34, 
165, 200-2 
Kemal Ataturk, 105 
Kingdom of God movement, 
Japan, 34 - 35 , 165 
Korea, emperor worship in, 30, 
145 

Laubach, Dr., 73 
Manchuria 

Christianity in, 43-44, *45 
Japan and, 41-44 
worship of Confucius in, 44 
Minobe, Dr., 24 
Moonje, Dr., 76—77 
Moslem church-state, 98 ff. 

National Christian Councils, 182 
China, 55, 169 




INDEX 


224 

National Councils—India, 90, 

166 

Japan, 37 

Near East, see Chap. IV, 97 ff.; 
also 146 

Christian Council, 97 

Nehru, Pandit Jawaharlal, 67- 
69, 82 

New Life movement, China, 
58-59 

Newspaper evangelism, 174 

Overseas Evangelistic Associa¬ 
tion, Japan, 36 

Palestine, 119-21 

Poole School, Osaka, 39-40 

Poona Pact, 74-75 

Proselytism, 182-83 

Race relationships, 209-10 


Reichelt, Dr. K. L., 54 
Rural life, China, 49-52 

Sharia law, 105 
Shinto 

Christians and state Shinto, 

28-30 

in Japan, 18 
state Shinto, 24-25 

T’ai-hsu, 54 
Takahashi, Mr., 27 
Takata, Mr., 32 
Times, the London, 28 
Tseng, Miss P. S., 55 
Turkey, 105-10 

Weigle, Dean, 169 
Wieman, H. N., 205-6 

Yen, Dr. Y. C. James, 52 

























































































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